Don't Raise Your Voice, Improve Your Argument

Desmond Tutu
Don't Raise Your Voice, Improve Your Argument
Like
Desmond Tutu “Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.”
Desmond Tutu: “Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.”
Image credit: Benny Gool, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Desmond Tutu (1931 - 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known as a powerful force for nonviolence in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement. Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, South Africa, and trained as a teacher before becoming ordained as an Anglican priest and studying theology. He was the first black African to serve as the Bishop of Johannesburg (1985-1986) and then Archbishop of Cape Town (1986-1996).

During his time as the general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (1978-1985), he emerged as one of the most prominent opponents of South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation and white minority rule. He stressed nonviolence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1984.

Alongside anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, he led negotiations to end apartheid and introduce multi-racial democracy. He continued to campaign for human rights after the fall of apartheid until his retirement from public life in 2010. 

Learn More.


You Might Also Like

🙌  Kofi Annan: "You are never too young to lead and you should never doubt your capacity to triumph where others have not."

🚂 Nelson Mandela: "Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front."

🌱 Martin Luther King Jr.: "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle."

🎯 Thomas Sankara: "You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.  It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future."

👁️ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: "If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."

Please sign in

If you are a registered user on Laidlaw Scholars Network, please sign in

Go to the profile of Susanna Kempe
about 2 years ago

I think this is so important. Social media, like Twitter, encourages people to pile on, and in, adding vitriol to outrage to scorn. Yet no one is persuaded to change their views, and certainly not their behaviour, by being told how dreadful they are. Insults and ridicule are more likely to cause someone to dig in than change. If we want our point of view to prevail, we need to argue more persuasively, not shout more loudly.

Go to the profile of Kayla Kim
about 2 years ago

Thanks Susanna, and agreed!