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
christian war holocaust
Now that they talk about Islam as being a violent faith, when you look at the history of Christendom, the Crusades and the many wars of religion that were fought, the cruelty of Christians in burning what they believed to be witches and burning heretics, and then very recently they were responsible for the Holocaust... it was Christians.
life success peace
Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
life friendship peace
If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
war ignorance winning
There's no way in which you can ever win a war against terror. As long as there are conditions in many parts of the world that make people desperate: poverty, disease, ignorance, etc. I hope that we will discover soon, that we can survive, only together. We can prosper only together. And I think people are beginning to realize this, that you can't have pockets of prosperity in one part of the world and huge deserts of poverty and deprivation and think you can have a stable, secure world.
jesus thinking christ
You have to say, whatever it is that I say or do or think or teach must be something that will be consistent with who Jesus Christ was. So that is your ultimate litmus test, not that you've got specific words to say, whatever they may be saying. It is what is being said. They're consistent with the revelation of God that we encounter in Jesus.
believe mean compassion
Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu, botho. It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humaneness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
book people church
You have to understand that the Bible is really a library of books and it has different categories of material. There are certain parts which you have to say no to. The Bible accepted slavery. St Paul said women should not speak in church at all and there are people who have used that to say women should not be ordained. There are many things that you shouldn't accept.
fall rivers people
There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.
political suffering kind
Ultimately, suffering is always political with all kinds of justifications - there are those who justify Israel's occupation of land as being a fulfillment of what God had promised.
ubuntu humanity language
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.'
eye biblical land
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
teaching worry moments
There would be those of us who say that in many ways, you worry about what the Jews in Israel are doing to themselves. Yes, they may at the moment have incredible power and are supported almost unconditionally by especially America, but most of the West as well. Yet what they are doing is contrary to the best teaching and highest teachings of their faith.
real development world
If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is WOMEN!
family dream compassion
God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.