Top 88 Rwanda's Quotes
#1. We got so much food in America we're allergic to food. Allergic to food! Hungry people ain't allergic to shit. You think anyone in Rwanda's got a fucking lactose intolerance?!
Chris Rock
#2. (On the beginning of the mid-1990s' genocidal war in Rwanda
Within six weeks, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing about three-quarters of the Tutsi then remaining in Rwanda, or 11% of Rwanda's total population, had been killed.
Jared Diamond
#3. It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda's genocide described as a product of "ancient tribal hatreds." I think this is an easy way for Westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown people.
Paul Rusesabagina
#4. Gorilla tourism is vital to Rwanda's economy: It's the third highest source of income.
Andy Serkis
#5. Somali is turning into a desert. Rwanda, you can hardly find a place to plant a potato, it's so crowded.
Jim Fowler
#6. Nobody tells you Rwanda looks like Tuscany with its tiled roofs.
Joanna Lumley
#7. In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.
Kofi Annan
#8. I believe, in the years to come, America will look to Rwanda as a very bright light of hope: a country that has been restored by the healing hands of God., ,
Tracey Lawrence
#9. Wherever God spends the day, He comes home to sleep in Rwanda.
Naomi Benaron
#10. I fell in love with Rwanda the moment I saw those verdant, rolling hills rise up beneath the wings of the plane as we descended toward Kigali airport.
Naomi Benaron
#11. In Rwanda that genocide happened because the international community and the Security Council refused to give, again, another 5000 troops which would have cost, I don't know, maybe fifty, a hundred, million dollars.
Lakhdar Brahimi
#12. The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.
Samantha Power
#13. Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach, and if there is any place that illustrates that complexity, as well as a better way forward, it is Rwanda.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#14. My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.
Patrick J. Adams
#15. Somewhere in Rwanda, a rural farmer is dreaming of providing an education for her children. Not just high school, but maybe even a university degree. Such a dream used to seem out of reach.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell
#16. Rwanda can be a paradise again, but it will take the love of the entire world to heal my homeland. And that's as it should be, for what happened in Rwanda happened to us all - humanity was wounded by the genocide.
Immaculee Ilibagiza
#17. What I learned in Rwanda was that God is not absent when great evil is unleashed. Whether that evil is man-made or helped along by darker forces, God is right there, saving those who respond to His urgings and trying to heal the rest.
James Riordan
#18. The perpetrators of genocides are usually men of the herd, men who follow orders without questioning them. Rwanda was no exception.
John Rucyahana
#19. It is a great tool of dictators and tyrants, who want to get masses of people to do what they want, to make sure there are no libraries...The fact that there was no public library in Rwanda is one reason why genocide was possible.
Stephen Kinzer
#20. It is better for a country to have a strong leader, this applies to the United States as well as to Rwanda.
Paul Kagame
#21. The new Rwanda is about building an economy that delivers prosperity and opportunity for our citizens based on a robust private sector. Foreign adventures would be costly and counterproductive distractions from these challenging objectives.
Paul Kagame
#22. As far as the political, military, and economic interests of the world's powers go, (Rwanda) might as well be Mars. In fact, Mars is probably of greater strategic concern. But Rwanda, unlike Mars, is populated by human beings, and when Rwanda had a genocide, the world's powers left Rwanda to it.
Philip Gourevitch
#23. The genocide [in Rwanda] was not a spontaneous eruption of tribal hatred, it was planned by people wanting to keep power. There was a long government-led hat campaign against the Tutsis.
Jonathan Glover
#24. I've never subscribed to the notion that poverty is quaint or that isolation is somehow ennobling. And anyway, this is Rwanda. There is very little innocence left to lose.
Will Ferguson
#25. It always amazes me how people in Europe and the United States can be so indifferent to the speeches of their chancellor or president, for these worlds from the top can be a wind sock for what might happen next.
Paul Rusesabagina
#26. You would think bearing witness to something like this would make a difference, and yet this isn't so. In the newspapers I have read about history repeating itself in Cambodia. Rwanda. Sudan.
Jodi Picoult
#27. Rwanda was considered a second-class operation; because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they'd accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
#28. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
[ Live 8 Concert, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2 July 2005]
Nelson Mandela
#29. I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.
John Pomfret
#30. Rwanda has emerged from the devastation of genocide and become more secure and prosperous than anyone had a right to expect.
Stephen Kinzer
#31. 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.
Romeo Dallaire
#32. For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
#33. Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.
Eric Alterman
#34. Everywhere I go, I see young people: Confident, forward looking. I have seen them in Lagos, in Rwanda, in the suburbs of London.
Binyavanga Wainaina
#35. I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.
Romeo Dallaire
#36. Ach bloodletting hastens the next, and as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable.
Bill Clinton
#37. The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Michel Chossudovsky
#38. 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
#39. I never make a distinction between private life and politics - that's a petit bourgeois thing. How can you make a stand against Nazi Germany, or in Rwanda, when you live life by making that distinction?
Marcel Ophuls
#40. You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on, and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.
Gordon Brown
#41. I certainly think that another Holocaust can happen again. It did already occur; think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
Miep Gies
#42. Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act.
Allyson Schwartz
#43. One is reminded of Primo Levi's observation about the Holocaust: 'Things whose existence is not morally comprehensible cannot exist.
Michael Barnett
#44. I think the only value of 'Hotel Rwanda' is the fact that it keeps the Rwandan genocide alive, but as far as content, it's Hollywood.
Romeo Dallaire
#45. One of the matters that must be addressed is that Rwanda and Uganda have to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We're also supporting processes to ensure that the political dialogue among the Congolese themselves takes place so that the people there can decide their future.
Thabo Mbeki
#46. In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.
Rick Warren
#47. When I got back I found myself being very emotional about the time spent in Rwanda in a way that I hadn't been able to or allowed myself to be when we were there.
Hugh Dancy
#48. The history and national interest of Rwanda and the Rwandan people dictate our national orientation.
Paul Kagame
#49. Without mutual tolerance emerging as the foundation, terrible situations like those of Tibet and Sri Lanka, Bosnia and Rwanda, can never be effectively improved.
Dalai Lama
#50. The U.N. has been so disappointing to date on the whole Rwanda issue that despite the people they've sent through, and I have no doubt their competence, in the end, the decision is going to be made by other people and not by them.
Tony Greig
#51. One of the difficulties about interviewing people in Rwanda is that the country is trying to get on with ordinary life and some people just don't want to get involved in this.
Tony Greig
#52. We are preaching hope, standing on the bones of the past.
John Rucyahana
#53. It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there's the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there's the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda.
Jello Biafra
#54. Rwanda is a landlocked country, but it hasn't stopped developing. They built a high-end tourism industry around the mountain gorillas.
Robert Zoellick
#55. I was on the ground, I was in command, I had been given the mission, and I took the decision.
Romeo Dallaire
#56. I can't think of a better model for Haiti rebuilding than Rwanda.
Paul Farmer
#57. I believe that we can heal Rwanda - and our world - by healing one heart at a time.
Immaculee Ilibagiza
#58. Rwanda has its own problems and never sought to blame others or cause others trouble. I advise Burundi to do the same.
Paul Kagame
#59. For many people in the U.N., the 1990s was the worst decade the organization experienced. This was the decade of Somalia, Srebrenica, of Rwanda and so forth, and yet the reality is, during this period, although there were these awful conflicts, the overall number of wars had gone down.
Andrew Mack
#60. We got involved in the Rwanda peace process for the simple reason that there was a decision which was taken by the Security Council, because the troops were in Uganda, and we decided to have a military presence.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
#62. Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonial Rwanda; it brought people together.
Philip Gourevitch
#63. The night I flew out from Rwanda, I landed in Nairobi, and I was on my way back home, and my left side started to paralyze and remained paralyzed with pain, and the stress and so on began to appear physically.
Romeo Dallaire
#64. Hutu extremists were able to incite genocide in Rwanda in part because years of propaganda had influenced Hutus to view Tutsis as less than human and so dangerous that they must be eliminated from the country.
Rachel Hilary Brown
#65. We have a chance here to prove that [Rwanda], a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence, can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive, quality health care with minimal outside help.
William J. Clinton
#66. Rwanda really did take very strong steps towards development. I mean, this place is unrecognizable. There's a very good management of economy and resources - it's a success story, and that's great.
Mo Ibrahim
#67. The only contry in the world where there's a majority of women in parliament is Rwanda. Rwanda. That's when women get power, real power - if the men are either dead or in prison.
A. L. Kennedy
#68. So this is why I'm always say happy that somebody mentions Rwanda, because behind Rwanda, we have Africa.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
#69. Paris Hilton is going on a goodwill mission to Rwanda. It's the first time an entire Third World country will have to get immunizations for a visitor.
Chelsea Handler
#70. It is the first time in the history of Rwanda that political change in the highest leadership of the country has taken place in peace and security.
Paul Kagame
#71. My father was an agricultural economist. In 1989 he was posted to Mbarara, a small town on the Uganda-Rwanda border.
Giles Foden
#72. What worries me is that we want to close down our relationship to the world at large. In other words, people's instincts are overwhelmed by the amount of images, or they can't distinguish anymore between Rwanda or Bosnia or Somalia.
Susan Meiselas
#73. I think to a certain extent in Bosnia and among the Hutus in Rwanda and also among the Tutsis in Rwanda who then took revenge on the Hutus, there is a sense of being swept up and a sense that the society in which they live has gone mad.
John Pomfret
#74. As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to the fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere-the truer shout is not "Never again" but "Again and again.
Paul Theroux
#75. Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
Wole Soyinka
#76. Acumen Fund is my prayer in response to genocide and what happened in Rwanda.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#77. Rwanda is not over needing aid, but we can survive with less aid than before.
Paul Kagame
#78. In Europe, his contacts apologized and said there was nothing they could do. They would keep trying, but no one was listening. Rwanda had no oil or strategic interest, no diamonds or gold.
Naomi Benaron
#79. I dream of a world liberated of all diseases. Ignorance also upsets me a lot. How can one calmly look at the pictures from Rwanda and not instantly want to take action and try to ease the suffering?
Naomi Campbell
#80. On the last Saturday of every month, Rwanda goes to work for itself: clearing land, building classrooms, making roads. On these national days of community work, known as umuganda, most shops and businesses are closed. Umuganda is a national priority, and everyone is expected to participate.
Patricia Crisafulli
#81. 'Hotel Rwanda' is an American product, not a Rwandan one, made primarily for American audiences.
Lee Siegel
#82. The fact that you had disruptions in the peace process was not only in Rwanda. We had the same problem in Cambodia, we had the same problem in Mozambique, we had the same problem in Salvador.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
#83. The genocide (in Rwanda) was a collective act. What made it possible, what made that final political crime possible, was the absence, the erasure, of seeing the other. Of knowing, of feeling, of being with the other. And when that's removed, then politics
can become genocidal.
James Orbinski
#84. Strong economic growth, and especially a significant increase in private sector investment, is the only sustainable path forward for Rwanda.
Paul Kagame
#85. The number one killer of children in Rwanda is malaria. Since the United States of America stood up and working with Rwandans, we have been able to cut those deaths by two-thirds.
Bill Frist
#87. There becomes little doubt as to why power chooses to support power. Rwanda becomes invisible once again. We have nothing America wants.
Terry Tempest Williams
#88. Rwanda had presented the world with the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews, and the world sent blankets, beans, and bandages to camps controlled by the killers, apparently hoping that everybody would behave nicely in the future.
Philip Gourevitch
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