DESMOND TUTU

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.

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

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

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

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

And every human being is precious.

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

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.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I'm quite shy.

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

We would like to see you departing peacefully.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.