Quote

Human beings are fundamentally good.

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
Fundamentally
Beings
Human
Humans
Good

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

Image
When we look at a conflict, it is so often rooted in injustice, prejudice, competition for resources, poverty, poor governance and corruption.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner.
Desmond Tutu
Image
When you are in love you strive to do the things that will please your lover.
Desmond Tutu
Image
We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.
Desmond Tutu
Image
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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.
Desmond Tutu
Image
If forgiving depended on the culprit owning up, then the victim would always be at the mercy of the perpetrator. The victim would be bound in the shackles of victimhood.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.
Desmond Tutu
Image
True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God could have created us to be automatons who were always choosing the right side, making the right decision. It is an incredible thing, God said I want persons who therefore have freedom.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Ubuntu tells us that we can create a more peaceful world by striving for goodness in each moment, wherever we are.
Desmond Tutu
Image
My flock is black, my flock is white. One has got to say to our people, I love you. I care for you, enormously. And when I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God is trying to woo us into a love affair with God.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Too many people think that reconciliation means you soft-pedal differences.
Desmond Tutu
Image
Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.
Desmond Tutu
Image
There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.
Desmond Tutu
Image
What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
Desmond Tutu
Image
You are not an afterthought, you are not an accident.
Desmond Tutu