Tutu Desmond Quotes

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

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.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

We are not responsible for what breaks us, but we can be responsible for what puts us back together again. Naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts.

We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.

We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.

I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil.

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.