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

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

- Desmond Tutu

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.

- Desmond Tutu

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

- Desmond Tutu

When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

- Desmond Tutu

Hate has no place in the house of God.

- Desmond Tutu

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.

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu

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.

- Desmond Tutu

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.

- Desmond Tutu

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

- Desmond Tutu

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

- Desmond Tutu