Top 100 Haiti's Quotes
#1. As Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will work on deepening Haiti's links with its traditional partners from the North and the South, while exploring all the opportunities for economic, cultural, scientific and technological cooperation that may benefit my country.
Laurent Lamothe
#2. In 1916, President Wilson drafted the speech in which he declared, "It shall not lie with the American people to dictate to another what their government shall be." His Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote in the margin: "Haiti, S Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama."6 That
Os Guinness
#3. Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.
Jim Yong Kim
#4. In the harrowing aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, one of the greatest needs became desperately clear: safe water.
Marcus Samuelsson
#5. I plan to be a part of Haiti's reconstruction and future.
Henry Rollins
#6. Thanks to the Betamax and Jason's diligent collection of tapes, she'd even been able to rerun the shows she'd missed while in Haiti. It was her job, she reasoned. And now she'd blown it!
Barbara Delinsky
#7. The diiference is that in the private sector you work for yourself, and as Prime Minister I work for every single Haitian - inside Haiti and outside - and for all those who love Haiti as well.
Laurent Lamothe
#8. If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.
Zora Neale Hurston
#9. But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.
Danny Glover
#10. For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.
Jared Diamond
#11. When you put more than a million kids in school, you take a plane today and go to Haiti, you cannot see the results. You will see the results in 30 years when you see a different type of Haitian.
Michel Martelly
#12. It's important to remember there is a 20 year US. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. That represents a major transition in the history of the country and kind of reshaping partly in terms of just their direction of their attention.
Laurent Dubois
#13. I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.
Bharati Mukherjee
#14. I know how the American people care for that democratic principle. They want to see their vote respected. As we in Haiti want to see the vote of the people respected.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
#15. Red carpets are pretty unpredictable. You can go from one person asking you what you're wearing to the next person asking you about the situation in Haiti. It's the extreme juxtaposition, and some of the questions can throw me!
Keith Urban
#16. What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this.
Danny Glover
#17. It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid.
Robert Gibbs
#18. If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.
Paul Farmer
#19. A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice.
Paule Marshall
#20. One can't do anything alone in Haiti. Sharing and cooperation are so deeply woven into the culture that sometimes it's hard to have a separate thought.
Madison Smartt Bell
#21. Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake.
Nicholas D. Kristof
#22. I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
#23. It's a marriage of convenience. Temporarily, so long as our interests coincide, however long it takes to dispose of that mob of petit blancs at Port-au-Prince. Afterward,' he waved his sticky fingers airily, 'everything will return to the way it was before.
Madison Smartt Bell
#24. The author also participated in Operation Uphold Democracy (in Haiti, a year after the catastrophic denouement of Operation Restore Hope in Somalia). ... Hope was not restored in Somalia. Democracy was not upheld in Haiti.
Stan Goff
#25. Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, "Diable! Diable!" And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of "Diable!" They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.
Cole Alpaugh
#26. It's so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there's truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there's so much more. There are multiple truths.
Roxane Gay
#27. Schoolchildren don't normally learn this poem about Columbus's second voyage to Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today): "In fourteen hundred and ninety-five, sixteen hundred people he kidnapped alive." Columbus
Brian D. McLaren
#29. Whether the people in Haiti, the young kids in Chicago that [are] going through violence, or whether you're in Atlanta or L.A. or Europe - it's not even color barriers for me - I go to where I know there's a lot of turmoil and pain.
Common
#30. Haiti is unique - the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it's like nothing the world has ever seen.
Ben Fountain
#31. Even before the earthquake in Haiti, only half the country's population had a source of safe drinking water.
Marcus Samuelsson
#32. The music in Haiti is all tied up in voodoo and African rhythm, and so there's this funny thing: go to a voodoo ceremony, and then go to a Catholic church and tell me which music you liked better, to which one the music is more integral.
Win Butler
#33. This was a "bad" example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic.
Edwidge Danticat
#34. Without question, conditions in the Haiti are worse since Aristide's removal, and continue to deteriorate.
Charles B. Rangel
#35. I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.
Tracy Kidder
#36. One of the things you don't have in Haiti is you don't have anybody on crack doing something completely out of - that's unpredictable. Even at the worst times in Haiti, the violence that had happened, the lack of security that happened, was largely predictable because it was politically tied.
Sean Penn
#37. Life's hard in Haiti right now. And the hardest thing is that the future does not lie with one person.
Edwidge Danticat
#38. I want to see Haiti do better. We have the sun everywhere: that's a big asset. We have wonderful coasts, beautiful islands, mountains. Other countries that have that are known for it, but Haiti has been so focused inwards, on its problems.
Laurent Lamothe
#39. My son graduated high school and went to Haiti to work for his dad's organization and then extended his stay. It's incredible what he's doing.
Robin Wright
#40. People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
#41. Coming from Haiti and growing up in Brooklyn, there's a lot of European influence when I get dressed up. I wear a lot of fitted suits, elegant cuts; I think it's cool to mash up a lot of different looks.
Wyclef Jean
#42. Where there is creativity there is hope and Haiti is the most hopeful place I've experienced
Donna Karan
#43. Haiti is the best cure against melancholy; it is also the most creative place for me to be. My productivity has increased enormously since I moved to Haiti. That's where I write my stories, develop my ideas and write nonstop, so it's a productive time, not a sleepy time.
Jorgen Leth
#44. It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.
Edwidge Danticat
#45. In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti - France and the United States - combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.
Noam Chomsky
#46. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
Howard Zinn
#47. The Haiti that has been waiting for help and not moving no longer exists. Enough handouts; we need hands up. Enough aid; we need trade.
Michel Martelly
#48. The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day
Eduardo Galeano
#49. I wonder if my kidnappers know who my father was in Haiti, or if they know what powers they are dealing with.
Marc Ashton
#50. Haiti allowed us to glimpse into a future of what disaster response might look like in a hyper-connected world.
Paul Conneally
#51. In 1994, when I went back to Haiti from exile, we established a Commission for Truth and Justice and Reconciliation. I passed the documents to the next government, and I never heard about it again.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
#52. Countries should think of Haiti not as a place where to do charity but a place where to invest and do business. And doing business in Haiti means poverty reduction.
Laurent Lamothe
#53. One of the things we have to acknowledge is that if you look at Haiti, many billions of dollars have gone into development aid there that have not been effective.
Paul Farmer
#54. I can't think of a better model for Haiti rebuilding than Rwanda.
Paul Farmer
#55. The work that Partners in Health do in Haiti benefits the whole world.
Win Butler
#56. Nothing is more dangerous than to live out the will of God in today's contemporary world. It changes your whole monetary lifestyle ... Let me put it quite simply: If Jesus had $40,000 and knew about the kids who are suffering and dying in Haiti, what kind of car would he buy?
Tony Campolo
#57. For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.
Katherine Dunham
#58. I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.
Tony Campolo
#60. Haiti is my country. The same way the Beatles are received in England - that's how Wyclef Jean is received in Haiti, do you know what I mean?
Wyclef Jean
#61. You know, we do not want the militarization of Haiti. We do not see a Haitian as a protectorate where it relinquishes its own sovereignty.
Danny Glover
#62. I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
Paul Farmer
#63. Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other such event in Western history.
Madison Smartt Bell
#64. Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.
Tracy Kidder
#65. In Haiti, as I understand it, storytelling and history itself are not a business of necessarily elucidating facts or the truth of an incident, but finding the version that is most entertaining and therefore will get retold and live in immortality.
John Edgar Wideman
#66. I have always enjoyed cemeteries. Altars for the living as well as resting places for the dead, they are entryways, I think, to any town or city, the best places to become acquainted with the tastes of the inhabitants, both present and gone.
Edwidge Danticat
#67. Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.
Paul Farmer
#68. Haiti itself was also photographed, some of the streets, some of the mountains, rivers, streams, etc. were photographed before talking with me about how I felt about Haiti. Then the camera went to our voodoo temple and saw a serious ceremony, a real ceremony.
Katherine Dunham
#69. Humanity ... Let Us Pray For PEACE. Peace In Our World and Peace Deep With in Our Souls. Now May We Try And Live That PEACE Each Day.
Timothy Pina
#70. For two hundred years Haiti has been swimming upstream. We were the first country in which independence was won by a group of slaves - black slaves. Across the water, the country that had just achieved independence - the U.S. - still practiced slavery.
Michele Montas
#71. The people in the United States are some of the most generous people in the world. We saw it in Haiti. We saw it with Katrina. When devastation strikes, American people want to step up.
Ertharin Cousin
#72. While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos.
Eliot Engel
#73. I want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.
Wyclef Jean
#75. I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it's at its extreme. And that's what they end up knowing about it.
Edwidge Danticat
#76. Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.
Wade Davis
#77. By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.
Noam Chomsky
#78. As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris, waiting to be rescued. When we think of their suffering, we feel deeply and profoundly that we should be there, in Haiti, with them, trying our best to prevent death.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
#79. We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax.
Rush Limbaugh
#80. There has not been one day since I left that I have not thought about Haiti.
Jean-Claude Duvalier
#81. I've wept for Haiti a thousand times over the years since my first trip during the Duvalier reign.
Carol Guzy
#82. I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.
Tony Campolo
#83. That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep.
Isabel Allende
#84. Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.
Assotto Saint
#85. Dear friends of Haiti, we are indeed on the right track. Slowly but surely we are rising from the ashes.
Laurent Lamothe
#86. When I was a child, my parents took my brothers and me to Port-au-Prince during the summer so we could get to know the country of our ancestors. Because Haiti is an island, the beach is everywhere. Haitians are particular, even snobby, about beaches.
Roxane Gay
#87. I covered Katrina, I've covered the tsunamis, all of them, the Haiti earthquake ... you get to a certain point in your career where you say, 'I want to now cover what I want to cover.'
Soledad O'Brien
#88. Descendants of de Clieu's original plant were also proliferating in the region, in Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. Ultimately, Brazil became the world's dominant coffee supplier, leaving Arabia far behind.
Tom Standage
#89. People of Haiti, I am the heir to the political philosophy, the doctrine and the revolution which my late father incarnated as president-for-life [and] I have decided to continue his work with the same fierce energy and the same intransigence.
Jean-Claude Duvalier
#90. One goes wherever one is still admitted. Someone told me that I might be able to get a visa for Haiti or San Domingo here.
Stefan Zweig
#91. That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art; it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
#92. Do yourself the ultimate favor ... Go out and make the rest of your life the best of your life.
Timothy Pina
#93. I wanted to contribute my time, myself, my knowledge, my love, because Haiti is my everything.
Laurent Lamothe
#94. The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.
Paul Farmer
#95. Haiti is an amazing country. Even though the people there have so little, their attitudes resonate a crazy amount of love and joy. It is truly inspiring to see that. My love for the country starts with them.
Noah Munck
#96. My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#97. The art of coalition command - whether it is here in Afghanistan, whether it was in Iraq or in Bosnia or in Haiti - is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect.
David Petraeus
#98. It's funny ... you can make fun of AIDS or Haiti, but if you make fun of some starlet in Hollywood's looks? That's like the one thing ... the line you are not to cross.
Daniel Tosh
#99. The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
#100. I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent.
Henry Rollins
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