If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people.
TUTU DESMONDWhen we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.
More Tutu Desmond Quotes
-
-
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.
TUTU DESMOND -
We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.
TUTU DESMOND -
A very important but difficult piece of renewing relationships is accepting responsibility for our part in any conflict.
TUTU DESMOND -
You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
TUTU DESMOND -
A person is a person through other persons; you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.
TUTU DESMOND -
Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful, and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
TUTU DESMOND -
We do not heal in isolation. When we reach out and connect with one another—when we tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and renew or release the relationship—our suffering begins to transform.
TUTU DESMOND -
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
TUTU DESMOND -
We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know.
TUTU DESMOND -
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.
TUTU DESMOND -
Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.
TUTU DESMOND -
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.
TUTU DESMOND -
Life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives
TUTU DESMOND -
Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
TUTU DESMOND -
Within every hopeless situation and every seemingly hopeless person lies the possibility of transformation
TUTU DESMOND