Desmond Tutu Quotes

Nothing endurable can be produced on a soil soaked with blood and moved by violent agitations.

American blood will run in the streets.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

My mind revolts and my soul cannot support the weight of so much evil: theft, rape, pillage, deaths, and murders, fires and devastation; the virgin violated, the cry of the widow and the orphan; the father armed against his son and each one looking for his brother to kill him; of those who have migrated; of the thousands who have fled; of the bodies stretched out in the public streets; of the bones which cover the fields and of so much blood shed on Venezuela’s soil.

There will never be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder When hunger ruled. I came among men in a time of uprising And I revolted with them.

Government violence can only do one thing and that is to breed counter-violence.

I think this is really a defining moment for the Arab world. The problem is, it is all going to be about blood, sweat and tears. In certain countries it may be just sweat, and in some countries sweat and tears, and in some countries, as you can see, a lot of blood. I think initial instability is something that we are all extremely nervous of.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness.

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

A State infinitely worse than that which the most inflamed Zealot, the most violent Republican or Enthusiast even pretended to dread before the Rebellion commenced.

Russia probably knows the true cost of revolutions better than most other countries.

Bloody revolutions are solid; bloodless ones are not permanent. But we have shed sufficient blood to come to this revolution. It has been shed not only on battlefields, but within the country…There have been many risings, all of which have been suppressed. Let us hope that there will be no more bloodshed. The first duty of our educated people is to enlighten and guide the opponents of our happy revolution.

Panamanians live in a chronic state of insurrection and violence.

Before long, all those bloody butcheries and massacres [violent revolutions] must arouse against them everything that is human in man.

Nations have the tendency to be born in blood.

It is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

The pogroms are oil for the wheels of revolution.

We must accept the possibility of bloodshed if we are to bring about order.

All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed.

A more mischievous idea cannot exist, than that any degree of wickedness, violence, and oppression may prevail in a country, that the most abominable, murderous, and exterminating rebellions may rage in it, or the most atrocious and bloody tyranny may domineer, and that no neighboring power can take cognizance of either, or afford succor to the miserable sufferers.

Our vengeance shall rival Spanish ferocity. Our goodwill is at last exhausted; and, since our oppressors compel us to mortal warfare, they shall disappear from America and our land shall be purged of the monsters that infest it. Our hate shall be inexorable and our war shall be to the death.