Top 80 Desmond Tutu Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one un-deserving of forgiveness.”

— Desmond Tutu

52. “Symptoms of chronic stress are feelings of fragmentation and of chasing after time – of not being able to be present. What we are looking for is a settled, joyful state of being, and we need to give this state space. The Archbishop once told me that people often think he needs time to pray and reflect because he is a religious leader. He said those who must live in the marketplace – business people, professionals and workers – need it even more.”

— Desmond Tutu

53. “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.”

— Desmond Tutu

54. “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.”

— Desmond Tutu

55. “It is small comfort to a mouse, if an elephant is standing on its tail, to say ‘I am impartial.’ In this instance, you are really supporting the elephant in its cruelty.”

— Desmond Tutu

56. “When you set out to change the world, the job seems insurmountable, but each of us can do his or her small part to effect change. We change the world when we choose to create a world of forgiveness in our own hearts and minds.”

— Desmond Tutu

57. “My first point seems overwhelmingly simple: that the accidents of birth and geography determine to a very large extent to what faith we belong.”

— Desmond Tutu

58. “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.”

— Desmond Tutu

59. “Forgiveness does not mean that we pretend things are anything other than they are. I am hurt, we say. I am betrayed, we announce. I am in pain and grief. I have been treated unfairly. I am feeling ashamed. I am angry this has been done to me. I am sad and I am lost. I may never forget what you have done to me, but I will forgive. I will do everything in my power not to let you harm me again. I will not retaliate against you or against myself.”

— Desmond Tutu

60. “God is not a diversion.”

— Desmond Tutu

61. “A very important but difficult piece of renewing relationships is accepting responsibility for our part in any conflict. If we have a relationship in need of repair, we must remember that the wrong is not usually all on one side, and we are more easily able to restore relations when we look at our contribution to a conflict.”

— Desmond Tutu

62. “God does not need us to protect him. Many of us perhaps need to have our notion of God deepened and expanded. It is often said, half in jest, that God created man in his own image and man has returned the compliment, saddling God with his own narrow prejudices and exclusivity, foibles and temperamental quirks. God remains God, whether God has worshippers or not.”

— Desmond Tutu

63. “The way to understand any enemy is to realize that, from his perspective, he is not a villain but a hero.”

— Desmond Tutu

64. “I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother.” Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. “We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don’t know who to forgive.”

— Desmond Tutu

65. “If you are able to talk about your life and the joys and sorrows you have experienced, if you know your story, you are much more likely to be a skillful parent.”

— Desmond Tutu

66. “All modern humans are related to what scientists call “Mitochondrial Eve.” This refers to our common matrilineal ancestor. She lived approximately 200,000 years ago and depending on how you estimate the length of a generation, we are only 5,000 to 10,000 generations from one another. To put it another way, each of us is a cousin of one another at most 10,000 times removed. And yes, Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa, so, in a very real way, we are all Africans.”

— Desmond Tutu

67. “Somewhere deep inside us we seem to know that we are destined for something better than strife.”

— Desmond Tutu

68. “There will be no future unless there is peace. There can be no peace unless there is reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation before there is forgiveness. And there can be no forgiveness unless people repent.”

— Desmond Tutu

69. “People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition.”

— Desmond Tutu

70. “You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.”

— Desmond Tutu

71. “We need rituals for all traumas and loss, whether it is betrayal or infidelity or violence or murder. Ritual helps us heal, and ritual helped me heal and become ready to consider the person who murdered Angela, his story, his pain.”

— Desmond Tutu

72. “Thus to forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, that greatest good, communal harmony that enhances the humanity and personhood of all in the community.”

— Desmond Tutu

73. “Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts. The process is simple, but it is not easy.”

— Desmond Tutu

74. “The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn’t pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that’s why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.”

— Desmond Tutu

75. “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.”

— Desmond Tutu

76. “There is a certain kind of dignity we admire, and to which we aspire, in the person who refuses to meet anger with anger, violence with violence, or hatred with hatred.”

— Desmond Tutu

77. “It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit.”

— Desmond Tutu

78. “One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God.”

— Desmond Tutu

79. “I’m actually very humbled listening to His Holiness,′ the Archbishop said, ‘because I’ve frequently mentioned to people the fact of his serenity and his calm and joyfulness. We would probably have said ‘in spite of’ the adversity, but it seems like he’s saying ‘because of’ the adversity that this has evolved for him.”

— Desmond Tutu

80. “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. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.”

— Desmond Tutu

81. “Peace always comes to those who choose to forgive.”

— Desmond Tutu

82. “I am a strong supporter of the recent extradition proceedings against General Pinochet. It would be quite intolerable that the perpetrator should decide not only whether he should get amnesty but that no one else should have the right to question the grounds on which he had so granted himself amnesty and for what offense.”

— Desmond Tutu

83. “Please go out and find a stone that appeals to you on some level. It can be beautiful or ugly. It shouldn’t be a pebble, nor should it be a boulder. Find a stone with some weight to it. It should be small enough to carry in the palm of your hand and large enough that you won’t lose it. Note in your journal exactly where you found the stone and what it was about the stone that appealed to you. Welcome. You have begun to walk the Fourfold Path.”

— Desmond Tutu

84. “I think it was a communication of the heart. When we kept quiet, our hearts discovered that they were kindred spirits.”

— Desmond Tutu