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Desmond Tutu

South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner (1931–2021)

Desmond Tutu (7 October 1931 – 26 December 2021) is a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black Archbishop of Cape Town and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa). He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Quotes

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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.
 
You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
 
If it happened in South Africa, why can't it happen anywhere?
 
We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.
 
I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama...
 
I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period.
  • 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.
    • As quoted in Unexpected News : Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (1984) by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 19
  • I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute — a white skin.
    • Guardian Weekly [London] (8 April 1984)
  • Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
  • History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene.
    • Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Speeches (1984)
  • Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant.
    • Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Speeches (1984)
  • Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.
    • As quoted in "The Words of Desmond Tutu" (1984)
  • 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.
    • As quoted in The New York Times (3 January 1985)
  • 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 quoted in The New York Times (3 January 1985)
  • 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.
    • Today, NBC TV (9 January 1985)
  • Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.
    • Quoted by L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley in letter to the editor Los Angeles Times (13 May 1985)
  • A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.
    • Address at his enthronement as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town (7 September 1986)
  • You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
    • Address at his enthronement as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town (7 September 1986)
  • We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.
    • Speech (1985) as quoted in Equality, Volume 1, Issue 1 (1989)
  • We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death.
  • At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'
    • Sermon in Tromsø, Norway (5 December 1991)
  • It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.
    • Speech entitled Freedom and Tolerance (June 1995), Cape Town Press Club
  • There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.
  • Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.
    • As quoted in "Truth and reconciliation" at BBC Focus on Africa (January-March 2000)
  • Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.
    • As quoted in "Truth and reconciliation" at BBC Focus on Africa (January-March 2000)
  • South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.
    • As quoted in "Truth and reconciliation" at BBC Focus on Africa (January-March 2000)
  • [T]here is always the possibility of change. If it happened in South Africa, why can't it happen anywhere?
  • People marched and demonstrated, and the Berlin Wall fell, and communism was ended. People marched and demonstrated, and apartheid ended. And democracy and freedom were born. And now people are marching, and people are demonstrating, because people are saying no to war!
  • The just war theory says you need a legitimate authority to declare and to wage war. Only the United Nations is that legitimate authority. Any other war is immoral. The just war says, “Have you exhausted all possible peaceful means?” And the world says, “No, we haven’t yet!” And any war before you have exhausted all possible peaceful means is immoral. And those who want to wage war against Iraq must know it would be an immoral war.
  • You know, those who are going to be killed in Iraq are not collateral damage. They are human beings of flesh and blood. They are children. They are mothers. They are brothers. They are grandfathers. You know what? They are our sisters and brothers, for we belong in one family. We are members of one family, God’s family, the human family. And how can we say we want to drop bombs on our sisters and brothers, on our children?
  • We said no to communism. We said no to apartheid. We said no to injustice. We said no to oppression. And we said yes to freedom, yes to democracy. Now I ask you: What do we say to war? CROWD: No! (February 15, 2003 speaking before a massive rally in New York to oppose the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq).
  • God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.
    • Beyers Naudé memorial lecture (15 August 2003)
  • We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
    • As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 255
  • We refuse to be treated as the doormat for the government to wipe its jackboots on.
    • As quoted in "Profile: Archbishop Desmond Tutu" at BBC (24 May 2004)
  • (on the US invasion of Iraq) Millions said, “No. Give peace a chance.” ... in order for it to be legitimate, and therefore justifiable, the only authority would have to be the U.N. And when they didn’t get what they wanted from the U.N., they did what they did. We said then, and we keep saying so, not just that it was illegal, it was immoral. And the consequences of it just now — I mean, you have to be — you’ve really got to be blind to say, “Well, yeah, it’s OK. We removed Saddam Hussein.” Why didn’t you say that was the reason for going? Because the world would have said, “No, no, no, no. That isn’t a reason that will be allowable for you to declare war.”.. I’m sad... They tell you a hundred people have been killed, and the United States and its allies are doing that, and they say, “No, no. We targeted that house because our intelligence said so.” Intelligence. The same intelligence that said there were weapons of mass destruction? Please. That’s been done in your name, that mothers and children have been killed. And when you say, “What about the civilian casualties?” they say, “Sorry, our intention was to target insurgents.” And most of us, I think, just shrug our shoulders.
  • This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, "I will draw some"? "I will draw some, and tough luck for the others"? He said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all." All! All! All! – Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush – all! All! All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called "straight;" all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go.
    • "And God Smiles," sermon preached at All Saints Church, Pasadena, California (6 November 2005)
  • Isn’t it desperately sad that, at a time when we face formidable problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, conflict – that the Anglican Communion can invest so much energy on disagreements about human sexuality? A communion that used to boast that one of its distinctive characteristics was something called comprehensiveness, that our communion, the Anglican Church, included just about everybody. Even if you had the most weird theology you could come in, you were allowed. And now we, who used to be held up in admiration by many because of this inclusiveness, are now spending time working out how we can excommunicate one another. God looks on and God weeps. God weeps.
    • "And God Smiles," sermon preached at All Saints Church, Pasadena, California (6 November 2005)
  • Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict – that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation? [The Communion, which] "used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers now seems hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep.
  • He has a childlike, boyish, impish, mischievousness. And I have to try and make him behave properly, like a holy man!
    • As quoted in "Dalai Lama honours Tintin and Tutu" at BBC News (2 June 2006)
  • We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.
    • As quoted in "Dalai Lama honours Tintin and Tutu" at BBC News (2 June 2006)
  • I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.
    • As quoted in God’s Mission in the World : An Ecumenical Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals (2006) by The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
  • What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.
  • 1994, that was first time, and the first time for Nelson Mandela, and he, too, this extraordinary human being, and the many, many, many, many others. Actually, in a way, you would say white people who had always voted in racially discriminated elections were voting for the first time, voting for the first time in a democratic — truly democratic — election. So, we were all, as it were, on the same page. But it was — I said then, when I was asked, “What is your — how do you describe how you feel?” I said, “Well, how do you describe falling in love? How do you describe red to someone who is totally blind? How do you speak about the glories of a Beethoven symphony to somebody who is deaf? Well, it’s like that. I mean, I’m over the moon. I’m on cloud nine,” as were most of my, if not all of my, compatriots on that day.
  • I want to say a big thank you to all of you, especially you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess of the world. And we want to say to the leaders who are meeting, look in the eyes of your grandchildren. Climate change is already a serious crisis today. But we can do something about it. If we don’t — if we don’t — hoohoo!, hoho! — there’s no world which we will leave to you, this generation. You won’t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in drought. There will be no food. There will be floods. We have only one world. We have only one world. If we mess it up, there’s no other world. And for those who think that the rich are going to escape — hahaha! — we either swim or sink together. We have one world. And we want to leave a beautiful world for all of this beautiful, wonderful young generation. We, the oldies, want to leave you a beautiful world. And it is a matter of morality. It is a question of justice.
  • None of us can say that had I been exposed to the same circumstances and conditions that I wouldn't have turned out the same way. Perpetrators don't have horns, don't have tails, they are as ordinary looking as you and I.

Without Forgiveness There Is No Future (1998)

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"Foreword" to Exploring Forgiveness (1998), edited by Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, p. xiii
  • Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. It is opening the door for the other person to have a chance to begin again. Without forgiveness, resentment builds in us, a resentment which turns into hostility and anger. Hatred eats away at our well-being.
  • Forgiveness is an absolute necessity for continued human existence.

Speech in Boston (2002)

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Excerpts from "Apartheid in the Holy Land" in The Guardian (29 April 2002)
 
We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world...
 
If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.
  • In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
    What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.
  • Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.
  • We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.
  • People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
  • Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.
    We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.

Wallenberg Lecture (2008)

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University of Michigan Wallenberg Lecture (29 October 2008)
 
God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.
  • Sometimes you want to whisper in God's ear, "God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?"
  • You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.
  • It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now?

God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations (2011)

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Life is more exhilarating as you try to work out the implications of your faith rather than living by rote, with ready-made second-hand answers, fitting an unchanging paradigm to a shifting, changing, perplexing, and yet fascinating world.
  • Some of my friends are skeptical when they hear me say this, but I am by nature a person who dislikes confrontation. I have consciously sought during my lifetime to emulate my mother, whom our family knew as a gentle “comforter of the afflicted.” However, when I see innocent people suffering, pushed around by the rich and the powerful, then, as the prophet Jeremiah, says, if I try to keep quiet it is as if the word of God burned like a fire in my breast. I feel compelled to speak out, sometimes to even argue with God over how a loving creator can allow this to happen.
    In the Church of Sant'Egido in Rome, home of an extraordinary community of lay people devoted to working with the poor, there is an old crucifix that portrays Christ without arms. When I asked about its importance to the community, I was told that it shows how God relies on us to do God's work in the world.
    Without us, God has no eyes, without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us. Won't you join other people of faith in becoming God's partners in the world?
    • Foreword (April 2011)
  • Isn’t it noteworthy in the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus does not give a straightforward answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). Surely he could have provided a catalog of those whom the scribe could love as himself as the law required. He does not. Instead, he tells a story. It is as if Jesus wanted among other things to point out that life is a bit more complex; it has too many ambivalences and ambiguities to allow always for a straightforward and simplistic answer.
    This is a great mercy, because in times such as our own — times of change when many familiar landmarks have shifted or disappeared — people are bewildered; they hanker after unambiguous, straightforward answers. We appear to be scared of diversity in ethnicities, in religious faiths, in political and ideological points of view. We have an impatience with anything and anyone that suggests there might just be another perspective, another way of looking at the same thing, another answer worth exploring. There is a nostalgia for the security in the womb of a safe sameness, and so we shut out the stranger and the alien; we look for security in those who can provide answers that must be unassailable because no one is permitted to dissent, to question. There is a longing for the homogeneous and an allergy against the different, the other.
    Now Jesus seems to say to the scribe, "Hey, life is more exhilarating as you try to work out the implications of your faith rather than living by rote, with ready-made second-hand answers, fitting an unchanging paradigm to a shifting, changing, perplexing, and yet fascinating world." Our faith, our knowledge that God is in charge, must make us ready to take risks, to be venturesome and innovative; yes, to dare to walk where angels might fear to tread.
    • Ch. 1 : God is Clearly Not a Christian: Pleas for Interfaith Tolerance

‎Attributed but unsourced

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  • When people say that the Bible and politics don't mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading.[1][2]


Misattributed

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  • The U.N. is as effective as its member states allow it to be.
    • This is actually a common observation, which has been made by many people, and thus far no published source has been found attributing it to Tutu. The earliest published variant thus far found was in Public Affairs Vol. 21 (1978) by the Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs, p. 102:
The United Nations is an inter-governmental body. It is made up of member states, and it can only be as effective as its member states allow it to be.
A variant was also prominent in Ch. 6 of the Preventing Deadly Conflict : Final Report (1997) by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict:
The main responsibility for addressing global problems, including deadly conflict, rests on governments. Acting individually and collectively, they have the power to work toward solutions or to hinder the process. The UN, of course, is only as effective as its member states allow it to be.
  • When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
This quote, often attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, was first written in a fiction play published by holocaust doubter Rolf Hochhuth, in his controversial The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (1964), Grove Press, p. 144, and by James Baldwin in his 1964 book, The Fire Next Time. No reference to any historical or original source was given. Other citations are found in books written by critics of religion, such as Christos Tzanetakos's "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer", iUniverse; and Jack Huberman's "Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound" (2008), 175. No references are given.
In Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; is clarified Tutu used it as a joke which was not of him.
  • The first thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
    • Often attributed to Desmond Tutu, actual source is G. W. F Hegel:
  • What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
    • Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832)

Quotes about Tutu

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  • If the reasons for Desmond Tutu becoming one of the world's most prominent advocates of faith-based social justice and religious tolerance could be reduced to a single succinct statement, it would be this: his fierce and uncompromising determination to tell the truth as he sees it.
    • John Allen, in the Editor's Preface to God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations (2011)
  • Nothing epitomizes Desmond Tutu's radicalism (using the word radical, as he likes to say, in the original sense of getting to the root of an issue) more than his views on the relationship of his faith to the faith of others.
    • John Allen, in the Introduction to Ch. 1 of God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations (2011)
  • There are so many people in South Africa, within the country, who are muzzled. And there are others who may not be muzzled within South Africa but whose passports are withdrawn, people like Bishop Desmond Tutu-a very important voice; you know, a writer is nothing compared with him. He is a big figure, a real leader, and he can't go abroad and speak. So I think that those of us who can, as long as we can, we have to use the opportunity.
    • 1984 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)
  • The climate movement has yet to find its full moral voice on the world stage, but it is most certainly clearing its throat-beginning to put the very real thefts and torments that ineluctably flow from the decision to mock international climate commitments alongside history's most damned crimes. Some of the voices of moral clarity are coming from the very young, who are calling on the streets and increasingly in the courts for intergenerational justice. Some are coming from great social justice movements of the past, like Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town, who has joined the fossil fuel divestment movement with enthusiasm, declaring that "to serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title; it requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands."
    • Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)
  • Dalawampu't limang taon na ang nakalilipas ang mga tao ay maaaring idahilan para sa hindi gaanong alam, o paggawa ng marami, tungkol sa pagbabago ng klima. Ngayon wala kaming dahilan.
  • I met with members of the South African Supreme Court, spoke with doctors at an HIV/AIDS clinic, and spent time with Bishop Desmond Tutu, whose joyful spirit I had gotten to know during his visits to Washington. "So is it true, Barack," he said with an impish smile, "that you are going to be our first African president of the United States? Ah, that would make us all verrry proud!"

References

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  1. ↑ http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/blog/january-2015/Faith-and-politics-a-match-made-in-heaven.aspx
  2. ↑ https://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/worshipandmusic/sermon-archive/anticipating-the-general-election
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