Quote

The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.

Desmond Tutu

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Problem
Spending
Need
Mines
Different
Mine
Envious
Needs
Perhaps
Spectacular
Even
Instead
Terribly
Time
Quite
Insecurity
Small
Gifts
Less
Celebrate

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

Image
To forgive is to abandon your right to pay back the predator in his own coin, but it is the loss that Liberates.
Desmond Tutu
Image
You are not an afterthought, you are not an accident.
Desmond Tutu
Image
In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.
Desmond Tutu
Image
It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
Desmond Tutu
Image
I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.
Desmond Tutu
Image
It is very difficult now in South Africa to find anyone who ever supported apartheid.
Desmond Tutu
Image
The final and full revelation of God is not a book, it is a person. Jesus Christ.
Desmond Tutu
Image
When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it's again not people who are intrinsically evil.
Desmond Tutu
Image
All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid.
Desmond Tutu
Image
The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Being formed into a nation takes some doing.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: 'You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian'? I don't think that is the case - because, you see, God is not a Christian.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world.
Desmond Tutu
Image
We must return to the fundamentals the fundamentals being that you count. That is where you start from. That you count you matter for God. That is a fantastic realization, and one that very few of us actually get to accept.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.
Desmond Tutu
Image
When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.
Desmond Tutu