Desmond Tutu
Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others.Collection: Feelings
I have seen firsthand how injustice gets overlooked when the victims are powerless or vulnerable, when they have no one to speak up for them and no means of representing themselves to a higher authority. Animals are in precisely that position. Unless we are mindful of their interests and speak out loudly on their behalf, abuse and cruelty go unchallenged.Collection: Mean
We are made by God, we are made like God, we are made for God.Collection: Made
There are people who go to bed hungry, and that is unconscionable.Collection: People
Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.Collection: Blood
It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Faith
Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels.Collection: Reading
Ubuntu tells us that we can create a more peaceful world by striving for goodness in each moment, wherever we are.Collection: Ubuntu
Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems - poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict - that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation? [The Communion, which] used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers [now seems] hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep.Collection: Brother
Beware when you take on the Church of God. Others have tried and have bitten the dust.Collection: Atheist
Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. Forgiveness is not pretending that things are other than the way they are.Collection: Forgiveness
We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.Collection: Being Alone
To forgive is not just to be altruistic.Collection: Forgiving
Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.Collection: Smart
Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.Collection: Xenophobia
It may be a procession of faithful failures that enriches the soil of godly success.Collection: Godly
Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.Collection: Religious
That's the chief lesson I have learned: the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.Collection: Laughter
Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant.Collection: People
We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death.Collection: Dog
Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us . . . Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others.Collection: Gratitude
It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ.Collection: Christian
We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.Collection: Gun
What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.Collection: Rights
There is room for everyone; there is room for every culture, race, language and point of view.Collection: Race
You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.Collection: Smart
We need to be accountable to God's family. Once we start living in a way that is people-friendly to all of God's family, we will also be environment-friendly.Collection: People
I am human because I belong, I participate, I share.Collection: Share
And one day, this thing happened to me: I coughed, and the blood just came gushing out of my mouth. ... I still can't believe that that happened to me, but I sat there, and I said to God, 'Well, if it means I'm going to die, that's OK.' I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.Collection: Believe
The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands. As God's family, we are stewards of God's creation. We can be wantonly irresponsible, or we can be caring and compassionate. God says, "I have set before you life and death... Choose life."Collection: Beautiful
We have an extraordinary God. God is a mighty God, but this God needs you. When someone is hungry, bread doesn't come down from heaven. When God wants to feed the hungry, you and I must feed the hungry. And now God wants peace in the world.Collection: Peace
It is very difficult now in South Africa to find anyone who ever supported apartheid.Collection: Difficult
The things [Pope Francis] has done in a short period of time: the fact that he does not live in a huge papal mansion and just dropped by in the dining room where ordinary people have meals. You think of his background, where he didn't use limousines in South America, that he used public transport.Collection: Thinking
Human beings have a vested interest in being trustworthy.Collection: Trustworthy
People are killed because they're gay. I don't think, "What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights." No. It's God catching me by my neck. I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can't!Collection: Gay
Sometimes you wish you could keep quiet. It's the kind of thing you heard the prophet Jeremiah complain of where he says, "You know God, I didn't want to be a prophet and you made me speak words of condemnation against a people I love deeply. Your word is like a fire burning in my breast."Collection: Deep Love
Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.Collection: Dust
Naming a center after a person who is still alive can make it seem that an individual somehow on their own was able to accomplish what he accomplished.Collection: Alive
Some people are able to use Bible as a means of opposing injustice, whereas others are able to find justification.Collection: Mean
God is forever using especially young people, not oldies like us, God likes using young people.Collection: People
I have a lot of time for young people.Collection: People
Every situation of justice is an occasion where someone is being humiliated and they want to restore their dignity. They think, "I am a human being and I may not be able to defeat these people or destroy them, but I will hit out at them, because I am not a thing, I am human."Collection: Thinking
Forgiving is good for your health.Collection: Forgiving
We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity. The Syrians are members of our family.Collection: Long
There are very few institutions that give prizes to people who may not have got to be number one, but are possibly better at coaxing the best out of others.Collection: Numbers
Those of us who came to be Christians get to remember that forgiveness cost God the death of God's son. It's an expensive thing in many ways.Collection: Christian
I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.Collection: Compassion
God loved me before I actually was.Collection: God Love