Desmond Tutu

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

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

In the Bible, we first encounter God when he sides with a bunch of slaves against a powerful Pharaoh, an act of grace freely given.

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.

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

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

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

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

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.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

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.

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

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

I want my commitment to ending girl marriage to be equal to my commitment to ending apartheid.

Instead of separation and division, all distinctions make for a rich diversity to be celebrated for the sake of the unity that underlies them. We are different so that we can know our need of one another.

Ubuntu tells us that we can create a more peaceful world by striving for goodness in each moment, wherever we are.

I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven.