Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu, CHis a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth7 October 1931
CityKlerksdorp, South Africa
eyebrows looks pits
It is quite exhilarating to speak about a God who has an incredible bias, a notorious bias in favor of the downtrodden. You look at Exodus and the Israelites' escape from a bottomless pit. God is not evenhanded. God is biased up to his eyebrows.
people perception
People want much the same things, but they have been formed by history to have a particular perception of the other.
christian children hate
Love is universal. You don't have to tell somebody that loving is better than hating. You don't have to believe in God to know that stealing is bad. All of God's children and their different faiths help to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God.
pain numbness guilt
When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.
black-and-white justice together
We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.
past people trying
Of course, you've got to reckon with the burden of the past. You can't just easily dismiss it. It is a legacy and often you have to carry an albatross. And it won't happen until people are able to have a certain level of trust and try to speak to each other, not as caricatures but as people.
christian children upset
God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.
jesus people political
When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political, or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.
pain forgiving
Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone.
taken people
All people would really want peace and all would want to be sure that they would not be taken advantage of.
morning father voice
My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument."
suicide military israel
Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.
love-you enemy ruins
Love your enemy; it will ruin his reputation.
believe thinking people
When you think of the KKK, they actually have as their emblem a fiery cross. And they don't see any contradiction between the cross, an instrument of suffering that procured our reconciliation with God, and its use as a symbol for nefarious attacks on black people. But they believe that they are being obedient to God because they can read things that they see.