Best Haitian Quotes & Sayings

How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant ... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us. — Tracy Kidder

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again. — Edwidge Danticat

We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit. — Katherine Dunham

It is with this surety that we must stand with Haiti, a country whose spirit and people will never be broken, and work in solidarity toward the future the Haitian people deserve. — Paul Farmer

I am currently in Haiti to help the Haitian people in their reconstruction. — Jean-Claude Duvalier

It's time for Haitians to have access to health care. It's time to open our borders to the Haitian diaspora, open our markets to the world. It's time to open our country to potential investors. — Michel Martelly

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

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. — Madison Smartt Bell

On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames. — Edwidge Danticat

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance. — Rachel Kushner

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

Before the Haitian Revolution, Africans toiling in the sugar fields of Saint-Domingue spread the story of the zombi. This was a living-dead person who had been captured by white wizards. Intellect and personality fled home, but the ghost-spirit and body remained in the land of the dead, working at the will of the sorcerers-planters. Any slave could be a zombi..." - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism — Edward E. Baptist

Slave rebellions, especially the [1791] Haitian Revolution, had an ongoing effect on the ways in which abolitionists talked about ending slavery. — Manisha Sinha

As a foreign worker in Haiti, speaking for myself, speaking for the workers, our organization is about 95 percent Haitian, but even foreign workers driving through, we have had very minimal security issues. — Sean Penn

I think it's hard for an outsider to capture the flavor of a community and all its nuances, so ultimately Haitian-Americans need to start sharing intimate accounts of their stories. — Edwidge Danticat

Barack Obama's administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the soldiers, here comes the food, go go go ... Rush Limbaugh told his multi-millions of listeners that Obama only did that to gain favour with black people in America. This is the kind of idiocy that I have to deal with in my country. — Henry Rollins

I know the Haitian people because I am the Haitian people. — Francois Duvalier

It's very difficult to get any movies done about Black heroes - Haitian or American - in Hollywood. The argument in Hollywood is that there is no market for those movies, and that is not true. — Jimmy Jean-Louis

Haitian diplomacy will be oriented toward the influx of foreign capital, direct investments that create jobs and stimulate economic growth. — Laurent Lamothe

The lessons are, unfortunately, that a small weak country that is facing an extremely hostile and very violent superpower will not make much progress unless there's a strong solidarity movement within the superpower that will restrain its actions. With more support within the United States, I think the Haitian efforts could have succeeded. — Noam Chomsky

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

We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields. — Edwidge Danticat

My first concern was to take care of my drawing. I did not have any knowledge in arts, especially Haitian arts, apart from the paintings I saw in my father's office. — Ralph Allen

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

The new Haitian baseball can't weigh more than four ounces or less than five. — Jerry Coleman

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it. — Noam Chomsky

It makes every Haitian proud to have such a hospital, — Laurent Lamothe

If a Cuban refugee is escaping, we're saying they're a political refugee, but why isn't a Haitian refugee a political refugee? They're escaping the capitalism and degradation of economic imperialism. We don't call them political refugees; we call them unfortunate people. — Ian Svenonius

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else. — Paul Farmer

Speak, breathe, prophesy, get behind a pulpit and preach, mark exam papers, run a company or a nonprofit, clean your kitchen, put paint on a canvas, organize, rabble-rouse, find transcendence in the laundry pile while you pray in obscurity, deliver babies for Haitian mothers in the midwifery clinic - work the Love out and in and around you however God has made you and placed you to do it. Just do it. Don't let the lies fence you in or hold you back. — Sarah Bessey