Desmond Tutu Children Quotations

Dream of a world where children can laugh and play and not be blown up by a mine they thought was a toy.

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.

... freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap; being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible healthcare. I mean what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life ... is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless.

Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.

If you are invisible, you are vulnerable. Birth Registration must be everyone's priority. Let's make all children visible and let's give every child a birthday!

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.

When a chap is in love, he will go out in all kinds of weather to keep an appointment with his beloved. Love can be demanding, in fact more demanding than law. It has its own imperatives - think of a mother sitting by the bedside of a sick child through the night, impelled only by love. Nothing is too much trouble for love.

The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.

Consider what we sometimes do with our children: We imbue them with this sense, very early on, that they have got to succeed. We are not content that they just do well, they have got to wipe the floor with the opposition.

The world's forests are a shared stolen treasure that we must put back for our children's future

God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.

I don't struggle to forgive people. I find it quite easy to forgive people for the harms that they have inflicted on me. What I do find challenging is to forgive people for the harms they inflict on my daughters and family. So, I find it challenging when I see somebody else experience hurt. I also look at my children and family and then I realize, I don't stand inside their skin and that is for me a forgiveness practice I still need to engage in.

Dream of a world where poverty is history, dream of a world where we don't spend those obscene billions on arms, knowing full well that a tiny fraction of those budgets of death would ensure that children everywhere had clean water to drink, could afford the cheap inoculations against preventable diseases, would have good schools, adequate healthcare and decent homes.

Children learn about the nature of the world from their family. They learn about power and about justice, about peace and about compassion within the family. Whether we oppress or liberate our children in our relationships with them will determine whether they grow up to oppress and be oppressed or to liberate and be liberated.

The heart of the Christian Gospel is precisely that God is the all holy One; the all powerful One is also the One full of mercy and compassion. He is not a neutral God inhabiting some inaccessible Mount Olympus. He is a God who cares about His children and cares enormously for the weak, the poor, the naked, the downtrodden, the despised. He takes their side not because they are good, since many of them are demonstrably not so. He takes their side because He is that kind of God, and they have no one else to champion them.

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.

Love is universal. You don't have to tell somebody that loving is better than hating. You don't have to believe in God to know that stealing is bad. All of God's children and their different faiths help to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God.

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.

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.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

We spend billions on banks when we know that a fraction of this money could save all the children in the world.

We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity. I don't want to oversimplify things - but the suffering of a mother who has lost her child is not dependent on her nationality, ethnicity or religion. White, black, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim or Jew - pain is pain - joy is joy.

Every praying person, every person who has an encounter with God, must have a passionate concern for his or her brother and sister, his or her neighbor. To treat any of these as if he were less than the child of God is to deny the validity of one's spiritual existence.