Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu, CHis a South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth7 October 1931
CityKlerksdorp, South Africa
future vision fossils
It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
fighting animal abuse
The matter of the abuse and cruelty we inflict on other animals has to fight for our attention in what sometimes seems an already overfull moral agenda. It is vital, however, that these instances of injustice not be overlooked.
eyebrows looks pits
It is quite exhilarating to speak about a God who has an incredible bias, a notorious bias in favor of the downtrodden. You look at Exodus and the Israelites' escape from a bottomless pit. God is not evenhanded. God is biased up to his eyebrows.
jesus people political
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.
earth climate defence
Climate change: Never before in history have human beings been called on to act collectively in defence of the Earth
injustice situation
To remain neutral in situations of injustice is to be complicit in that injustice.
gay ethnicity people
It isn't that it's questionable when you speak up for the right of people with different sexual orientation. People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity; it's precisely the same thing for sexual orientation. People are killed because they're gay.
commitment law doubt
I have no doubt that in the future, the laws that criminalize human love and commitment will look the way the apartheid laws do to us now, so obviously wrong
technology understanding together
It may seem daunting, but I am a prisoner of hope. We are more connected than ever before, we have more knowledge, and there are solutions if we work together. Today's technology is a great asset in encouraging global cooperation and understanding.
israel racism looks
Is Zionism racism? I would say yes. It's a policy that to me looks like it has very many parallels with racism. The effect is the same. Whether you call it that or not is in a sense irrelevant.
eye biblical land
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.
thinking order people
A person is a person through other persons. 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. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.
people favors speak
People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.
land justice trying
I don't often want to speak. I try to be a reasonable person and to be diplomatic, but you go to that place and you see the settlements, you see what has happened to the land that was owned by the Palestinians. I have often said to my Jewish friends: "Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, 'Treat the alien well with justice.'"