Rwanda Quotes - Page 3

• I am still suffering from my experience in Rwanda, I never know when I'm going to drive my car off a bridge, or just decide to take my life.

  Roméo Dallaire

  Bridges, Car, Suffering

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• We do not have a South African as a member of the African Commission. The President of the Commission comes from Mali, the Deputy comes from Rwanda and then we have got all these other members, ordinary commissioners. There is no South African there. And the reason, again, for that is not because we didn't have South Africans who are competent.

  Thabo Mbeki

  President, Ordinary, Reason

  Source: www.gov.za

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• One of the things I write about a bit in my Madam Secretary memoir is on Rwanda, where I was an instructed ambassador at the U.N., and my instructions were to not vote for increased forces there, and I didn't like my instructions. So I got up and called Washington and said, "Change my instructions," and they didn't.

  Madeleine Albright

  Writing, Ambassadors, Vote

  Source: www.chicagomaroon.com

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• Reconciliation has taken place here in Rwanda and was successful because Rwandans reconciled themselves internally. If the tribunal had taken place in Rwanda, it might have helped. People could have watched justice being done.

  Paul Kagame

  Taken, Successful, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• There are African leaders who have the dangerous habit of leading their people into an abyss. In Rwanda we've had presidents who killed. The one million people who died here were, to a certain extent, victims of their leader, President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died in a plane crash before the genocide began. He contributed to all that. The man who took over from him was running around ordering people to kill. If this president came back and landed in my hands, I would have him arrested and tried. Unfortunately, he died a natural death.

  Paul Kagame

  Running, Men, Hands

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• When people accuse us of taking coltan from Congo, I don't understand what they mean. The quality of our own coltan here from Rwanda is much better. But still people from the UN come here, we show them our coltan mines, we show them the documents, then they go and say: Rwanda smuggles coltan.

  Paul Kagame

  Mean, People, Quality

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• In Rwanda, we have a society that has experienced a very serious rupture and you can't expect all of a sudden that things will be perfect. Even so: You cannot find any more areas where any segment of the population would be afraid to go, like we used to have before. But there is always a lot more to do.

  Paul Kagame

  Perfect, Population, Would Be

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy.

  Paul Kagame

  Democracy, Monarchy

  "Paul Kagame Interview in Jeune Afrique: 'Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy'". umuvugizi.wordpress.com. April 9, 2016.

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• I can't think of a better model for Haiti rebuilding than Rwanda.

  Paul Farmer

  Thinking, Haiti, Rebuilding

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• I believe that we can heal Rwanda - and our world - by healing one heart at a time.

  Immaculee Ilibagiza

  Believe, Healing, Heart

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• Perhaps we have failed as human beings. Perhaps we have embarrassed ourselves to the natural world. We have been rigorous and willful in all the wrong ways. But it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe you don't want to deal with (marching), the permanent marker and poster board. But try something else. Carry someone's groceries. Chat with the custodian in your office building. Donate blood. Live in Rwanda for a year. Write letters to the Department of Buildings. Learn to knit. It is only going to get better from here on out.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Writing, Blood, Years

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• Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Gratitude, Strong, Prayer

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• Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people - mothers, children, babies, civilians - lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria. It's this charge that's dominated the book's Nigerian press, so far as I can see, the accusation, on the one hand, that Awolowo hatched "a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation - eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

  Chinua Achebe

  Mother, Baby, Children

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• I know that the fact that I am candidate to my own succession in 2017 can be perceived to be a bad thing by some part of the public opinion outside Rwanda and I don't mind because I know that I am doing it for a good cause. It really doesn't matter to me that my name is associated to those critics as long as I know that I am doing the will of the people.

  Paul Kagame

  Names, Long, People

  "Paul Kagame Interview in Jeune Afrique: 'Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy'". umuvugizi.wordpress.com. April 9, 2016.

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• Rwanda is an example in terms of the transformation of the rights of women. But if you talk to almost any Africanist at the State Department or the World Bank, when you say the word Africa, they think women.

  Swanee Hunt

  Thinking, World, Transformation

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think the women in the political positions will push very, very hard to see that there are loans and banks for women in Rwanda.

  Swanee Hunt

  Thinking, Political, Loan

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The United States is the lone superpower of the world. We have a stake in Rwanda's success because we have a stake in the world's stability.And we have got to understand the need for a paradigm shift. This is not about "might makes right." This is about a democratic movement that pulls out the voices of all of the people so that they come up with a fair and healthy and stable and sustainable society. And if we can learn those lessons in a place like Rwanda, then we can apply them around the world.

  Swanee Hunt

  People, Healthy, World

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• These are the kind of things I always zero in. When I was in Rwanda, it was the same thing. You're always zeroing in those details. Not just always the bodies, but what makes up the human being.

  Stanley Greene

  Kind

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What I really intend to achieve is to be that fly on the wall, and to try and observe as much as I can without affecting what I've seen. I want to get a sense that what I'm seeing in a place would have happened had I not be there. Were I to make myself an important presence, that would be lost. The danger of a certain other kind of reporting is that people give you what they think you are seeking. People know what you want. When I was traveling in Congo and Rwanda and people asked me what I wanted, I would say, "Nothing. I just want to be here." And that immediately disarmed them.

  Anjan Sundaram

  Wall, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Peace cannot come without the engagement of those who have been before. Gen. Dostum will make peace possible. He was engaged in conflict of the past. Forgiveness is an extremely important part of our culture. But, like Rwanda and South Africa, we need to fashion our own solution.

  Ashraf Ghani

  Fashion, Past, Important

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places - Darfur, Rwanda, even Colombia - where the dead have no faces and literally cannot be counted. Theirs are minuscule lives moving toward imperceptible deaths. For me, it is the essence of tragedy.

  Bernard-Henri Levy

  Memories, Moving, Funeral

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people do there. I think it's profoundly ignorant. I was astonished when Samuel Huntington wrote his famous clash of civilizations essay in response to the Yugoslavian war. I was on the streets in Sarajevo and every other person I met came from a mixed marriage. And here is Professor Huntington from Harvard writing this is a clash of civilizations. That was absurd.

  Payam Akhavan

  War, Hate, Writing

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• It is the worst atrocity underway [in Rwanda]. But it's barely in the media, and people just don't know about it. And that's quite generally true.

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, People, Atrocities

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Israel and Rwanda both play an active part in international organizations, including the U.N., but I think it's true that our unique experiences as nations have shaped a fierce independence that we will not relinquish.

  Paul Kagame

  Thinking, Unique, Play

  "Exclusive interview: Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda". Interview with Tony Metcalf, www.metro.us. August 29, 2012.

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• Rwanda is a very open and free country. Key to our recovery as a nation has a range of grassroots, citizen-centered polices we call "homegrown solutions." The idea that Rwanda is highly controlled from the center belies the reality, which is that citizens in every village have a powerful say in how things get done. We prize accountability and Rwandans are quickly adapting themselves to the possibilities of a digital economy.

  Paul Kagame

  Country, Powerful, Recovery

  "Exclusive interview: Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda". Interview with Tony Metcalf, www.metro.us. August 29, 2012.

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