Colombia Best Quotes & Sayings

We have a bad image in the world, I've got to admit. I just want people to think twice about Colombia. Don't go by the first impression. — Camilo Villegas

Colombians might live in one of best places in the world to grow coffee beans, yet their cups of coffee come from dehydrated granules in tiny plastic packages. This is the definition of tragedy. — Bryanna Plog

We've built six schools in Colombia and do work in South Africa and Haiti. We teach 5,000 students. — Shakira

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States. — Pablo Escobar

It was apparent that the ladies vying to be Miss Colombia had to first go through a stringent competition of poise, talent, and debate on who had the best abs and biggest breasts to win the right to represent their department. They received lots of cheers from the crowds - and lots of open stares from all the police guarding the boulevard. — Bryanna Plog

Political events are part of everyday life [in Colombia], so art and politics came to me as a natural thing, something that has been very much present in my life from the start. — Doris Salcedo

The problem was that Panama technically belonged to Colombia, which refused to sign a treaty leasing it to the United States. So Roosevelt sent a gunboat filled with marines down to Panama, just on the off chance that a revolution might suddenly break out, and darned if one didn't, two days later. Not only that, but the leaders of the new nation of Panama-talk about lucky breaks!-were absolutely thrilled to have the United States build a canal there. 'Really, it's our pleasure,' they told the marines, adding, 'Don't shoot.' — Dave Barry

Einstein said if somebody time and again does something, or tries to do something, with the same negative results, and continues to insist on doing so, then he's a fool. This strategy carried out, applied by the United States in Colombia, has been a total failure. — Rafael Correa

Between 1831 and 1891, US armed forces - usually the Marines - invaded Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, Haiti, Argentina, and Chile a total of thirty-one times, a fact not many of us are informed about in school. The Marines intermittently occupied Nicaragua form 1909 to 1933, Mexico from 1914 to 1919, and Panama from 1903 to 1914. To 'restore order' the Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, killing over two thousand Haitians who resisted 'pacification.' — Michael Parenti

Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese. — Noam Chomsky

It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia. — Juan Manuel Santos

Bye, bye! I'm from Colombia! I'm Sofia Vergara! — Giuliana Rancic

Kate could not have looked any more stunned if he'd just proposed that they move to Colombia State together and become coffee bean farmers. — Marissa Meyer

Well, in Colombia everybody's very voluptuous, and you're supposed to be. You don't want to be skinny when all of your cousins are mermaids. You grow up thinking that's how beauty is. — Sofia Vergara

At family gatherings in the United States, two off-limit subjects are almost always put together in the same phrase: no religion or politics. While in Colombia, the former was embraced ("What do you mean you aren't Catholic?") but the latter was taboo. While it may be the only reason that Colombia (or Columbia) makes the international news outside of prostitution or scandals, Colombia's political problems, drug trade, and civil conflicts are forbidden subjects for most Colombians. — Bryanna Plog

When I was growing up, Forest Park was full of integrated families. It was amazing. One my best friends was Vietnamese. Another one was half-Mexican, half-black. Another one was from Colombia. Another one was born in the U.S., but his mom was from Germany and spoke with a German accent. So we all had multiple identities. — Dinaw Mengestu

A majority of my blind students at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in Trivandrum, India, a branch of Braille Without Borders, came from the developing world: Madagascar, Colombia, Tibet, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India. — Rosemary Mahoney

So what if those stupid roosters don't want to crow?
If we've learned to live without men, we can learn to live without cocks. — James Canon

Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created and appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia. On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems. — Michael Ruppert

Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts ... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands ... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it. — Milton Friedman

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. — Magnus Linton

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best. — Jan Schakowsky

Am I good enough to be No. 1? Sure, but who's gonna break Tiger's legs? I want to be the best. Can I? Oh, believe me, I will be trying. Hard. You grow up in Colombia, and everything is limited. Then, I come here, and you have everything. A trainer, nutritionist, coach. I'm very lucky. Many doors open, and I have a path to take. — Camilo Villegas

Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru,
Colombia and the Caribbean
Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their hearts
For he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan. — Dejan Stojanovic

I started the Pies Descalzos foundation in Colombia when I was 18, and since then I have been very involved in the crusade for education. — Shakira

Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in east-central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn't yet met. It was a clear and eyeblue day, that day, as was the first day of this story, a few years ago in January, on Chicago's North Side, in the opulent shadow of Wrigley and with the wind coming low and searching off the jagged half-frozen lake. — Dave Eggers

The international community has to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donors need to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people are forcibly displaced today as the entire populations of medium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africa or South Korea, — Antonio Guterres

stepping out of the airport into coastal Colombia is like getting bludgeoned with a sack of wet laundry. — Brian Kevin

When you have a strong conservative streak in your society," Zeyk would say, "which detaches itself from the progressive streak, that's when you get the worst kinds of civil wars. As in the conflict in Colombia that they called La Violencia, for instance. A civil war that became a complete breakdown of the state, a chaos that no one could understand, much less control. — Kim Stanley Robinson

There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes. — Milton Friedman

When we first invested in Colombia, we were buying a lot of coal from Colombia. We were dealing with them daily. I knew their guys at the port, I knew their guys at the mine, I had a feel of the country. — Ivan Glasenberg

As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved. — Carol D. Leonnig

I grew up with a lot of exiles from Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia - I grew up with them, and I gained a family; I gained friends. — Gael Garcia Bernal

Ecuador has about 700 kilometers of border with Colombia, and a lot of it is impenetrable jungle. — Rafael Correa

I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions. — Juan Manuel Santos

I don't think anyone would look at Colombia today and say that it is failing. This positive outcome is an example of the effective application of smart power - it is succeeding. — James G. Stavridis

Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working. — Juan Manuel Santos

We expect 'Narcos' will be an enormous success throughout everywhere in the world and maybe out-index in Latin America, given the Brazilian star and Brazilian director and heavy Latin American cast and that we shot the show entirely on location in Colombia. — Ted Sarandos

I started the 1998 World Cup with Teddy Sheringham up front but always planned for Michael Owen to face Colombia in our final group game because they defended square and a quick striker would be able to exploit the space behind them. — Glenn Hoddle

Free trade with Colombia is something that's a no-brainer. — John McCain