519 Quotes by Desmond Tutu

This is what healing demands. Behavior that is hurtful, shameful, abusive, or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth, and truth can be brutal.

A person is a person through other persons.None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. 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.

Meet me hereSpeak my nameI am not your enemyI am your teacherI may even be your friendLet us tell our truth together, you and IMy name is anger: I say you have been wrongedMy name is shame: my story is your hidden painMy name is fear: my story is vulnerabilityMy name is resentment: I say things should have been differentMy name is griefMy name is depressionMy name is heartacheMy name is anxietyI have many namesAnd many lessonsI am not your enemyI am your teacher

We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. (...) The concept of Ubuntu says: A person is a person through other persons.

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

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.

We learn from history that we don't learn from history!

My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.