Quotes & Sayings About Haiti

Never before has anyone figured out how to rent out American foreign policy, how to convert the position of secretary of state into a personal money machine. Hillary, with Bill's help, figured out not only how to shake down Russian oligarchs and Canadian billionaires by offering them control of America's uranium assets; she also figured out how to rob the island nation of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It's one thing to rip off the world's rich; it takes a special kind of chutzpah to steal from the poorest of the poor. — Dinesh D'Souza

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

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

With Yele Haiti, the first thing was I'm proud of the organization and the work that the organization has done, and in the future hope to continue doing. — Wyclef Jean

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

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

Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money. — Edwidge Danticat

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

What is evil? What is - where does the evil come from that lies behind someone like Saddam Hussein, or Radovan Karadzic, or General Claude Raymond in Haiti. As I say, I've tended to find these people - I mean, Saddam, I've never met or interviewed - but these other people to be rather disappointing. Their political goals were mundane. What they had working for them was opportunism, was very often cleverness and was ruthlessness. — Mark Danner

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

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

I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti. — Edwidge Danticat

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

Style is obviously important in Haiti. A lot of people wore bright colors and neatly pressed shirts. The taxis and billboards were beautiful. Haiti is not afraid of color. And texture. And depth. The young people looked fierce and bored. They looked like pure energy. There was true aesthetic but also a palpable darkness. I mean, let's get real. Kids are slaves here. Kids are bought and sold and put to work. — Amy Poehler

By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti. — Noam Chomsky

Haiti looks like a bomb hit it. — Jim Fowler

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

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

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

Haiti fell over? Who built Haiti? Two of the three little pigs?! — Christopher Titus

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti. — Henry Louis Gates

It has been hard to muster the resources to support fledgling democracies- or to help the world's most desperate - the AIDS orphan in Uganda, the refugee fleeing Zimbabwe, the young woman who has been trafficked into the sex trade in Southeast Asia; the world's poorest in Haiti. Yet this assistance - together with the compassionate works of private charities - people of conscience and people of faith - has shown the soul of our country. — Condoleezza Rice

No one seemed to understand. I'd go to movies, see friends, but after a couple days I'd catch myself reading plane schedules, looking for something, someplace to go: a bomb in Afghanistan, a flood in Haiti. I'd become a predator, endlessly gliding in saltwater seas, searching for the scent of blood. — Anderson Cooper

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

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

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

Where there is creativity there is hope and Haiti is the most hopeful place I've experienced — Donna Karan

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

When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, I was on vacation in the Cayman Islands. — Jose Andres

Canadians have been very generous toward Haiti after the earthquake and, thanks to you, our most vulnerable people have received food, drinkable water, shelter, medical care and education. For that, we are extremely grateful. — Laurent Lamothe

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

Life's hard in Haiti right now. And the hardest thing is that the future does not lie with one person. — Edwidge Danticat

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

Haiti kind of gets a hold of you. — Sean Penn

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

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

I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent. — Henry Rollins

The future of Haiti must be linked to the respect of the rights of every single citizen. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide

There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, "Cut their heads off, burn their houses." — Edwidge Danticat

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. — Pat Robertson

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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

I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti. — Paul Farmer

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

There has not been one day since I left that I have not thought about Haiti. — Jean-Claude Duvalier

What our world needs now is not war for our earth has seen too much of its bloodshed but peace is what humanity truly needs — Timothy Pina

To read 'Happy Talk' is to crash a party as vivid and surreal as Felini's 8. It's the business of show business, the American dream, told by a chorus of Americans locked just outside of that dream, outside of the United States, relegated to expatriate status on the shores of Haiti. Melo paints a version of Haiti that's an interior landscape perhaps even more than an externalized place. This Haiti is a plan, a memory, a morphine-drip fueled dream out to bond its inhabitants forever. — Monica Drake

No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness. — Edwidge Danticat

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

Without question, conditions in the Haiti are worse since Aristide's removal, and continue to deteriorate. — Charles B. Rangel

When people think about this religion, they'll say "voodoo" this and "voodoo" that in the way the Hollywood movies show it: the sticking of pins in dolls. It's very different than Vodou - which is a religion that comes to Haiti from our ancestors in Africa. I want to differentiate it from the stereotypical, sensationalized view that we see of the religion. — Edwidge Danticat

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

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor. — Howard Zinn

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

At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease. — Paul Farmer

One day you see a man walking down the road, the next day you come to his yard and find him dead ... Why is it that he cannot do what the living do? It is because the thing that gave power to these parts is no longer there. That is the duppy, and that is the most powerful part of any man. Everybody has evil in them, and when a man is alive ... he will not abandon himself to many evil things. But when the duppy leaves the body, it no longer has anything to restrain it and it will do more terrible things than any man ever dreamed of.
- From 'Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica', Zora Neale Hurston, 1938 — Charles A. Cornell

The stakes are very high for us in Haiti. We have many important interests there. Perhaps the most important to me is our interest in the promotion of democracy in this hemisphere. — Warren Christopher

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

Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work. — Bill Gates

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

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

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

Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it's not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It's just a matter of psychology. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide

When I came in, Haiti was not governed by Haitians anymore. Probably mostly by NGOs. And that has done what to Haiti? It has weakened our institution. — Michel Martelly

But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative - the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is meant to support some political movement or ideology. All fiction reinscribes the problematic past in terms of the present, and, if it is significant at all, reckons with it instead of simply making it palatable or pretty. What aesthetic is adequate to the Holocaust, or to the recent tragedy in Haiti? Narrative is not exculpatory - it is in fact about culpability, about recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us. If we're to say anything important, we require an art less facile, and editors willing to seek it. — Michael Copperman

Haiti is extremely stratified socially with a number of large families controlling most of the economy, and import-export. — Michele Montas

It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid. — Robert Gibbs

I wanted to contribute my time, myself, my knowledge, my love, because Haiti is my everything. — Laurent Lamothe

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

The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive. — Bill Gates

For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks. — Zora Neale Hurston

Do yourself the ultimate favor ... Go out and make the rest of your life the best of your life. — Timothy Pina

Not maybe. Definitely! We have an expression back home in Haiti, which says something like 'a man who is thinking with his penis.' That is what you are Michael. That doesn't mean that you are addicted to sex or pornography. You are not a pervert of any kind. Contrary! You are just too sensitive with women. You fall in love at the blink of an eye and all your decisions are based on your passions towards a particular woman. Your mind gets blurry because not enough blood goes to your brain. And your heart pumps all the blood back to your penis and that is why you are a man who thinks with his penis." (Ch.7) — Stevan V. Nikolic

Shit, man, if you see a dog scratching at the dirt trying to dig something up, walk away real fast, he said, then pulled a little square of paper from his pocket and swallowed whatever was folded inside. — Cole Alpaugh

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 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

Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects. — Paul Farmer

On February 8, 1928, known as Lindbergh day since it was the day he crossed the Atlantic Ocean the year before, Charles A. Lindbergh landed at the Campo Columbia airfield near Havana. Lindbergh had visited many countries in his plane, and he had the national flags of each country painted in the fuselage. Having flown from Haiti, on a Goodwill Tour of the Caribbean in his "Spirit of St. Louis," he had the Cuban flag painted on his a single-engine Ryan monoplane. It was the last country he visited before he donated the "Spirit of St. Louis" to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — Hank Bracker

In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises. — Wade Davis

Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now. — Edwidge Danticat

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

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

The State should have made sure the money given to the NGOs was used according to a global plan for Haiti; not doing whatever they want. They should be supervised and have to report and make sure the money is being used properly. They are here, but we are seeing no results. — Michel Martelly

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

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

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

In Haiti, untitled rural and urban real estate holdings are together worth some 5.2 billion. To put that sum in context, it is four times the total of all the assets of all the legally operating companies in Haiti, nine times the value of all assets owned by the government, and 158 times the value of all foreign direct investment in Haiti's recorded history to 1995. — Hernando De Soto

I plan to be a part of Haiti's reconstruction and future. — Henry Rollins

Every time I go to Haiti after a season of busy work in Europe, I feel like I'm submerging into a certain state of mind, which is very productive. — Jorgen Leth

People in Haiti eat dirt because it gives their starving bodies a false sense of satisfaction. But mud pies don't fill. They merely mask real hunger. [...] I saw the mud pies as a metaphor for the life of any Christian who has ever looked to something or someone other than God for fulfillment. — Jennifer Dukes Lee

In the harrowing aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, one of the greatest needs became desperately clear: safe water. — Marcus Samuelsson

I would want to make Radio Haiti as independent as possible, which means it can't be strictly commercial. — Michele Montas

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

Haiti, like any place, has its security problems; it has a great challenge in terms of establishing a kind of globally acceptable rule of law. — Sean Penn

Thirdly, and most importantly, American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti and Brazil were plagued by malaria and yellow fever, which had originated in Africa. Africans had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases, whereas Europeans were totally defenceless and died in droves. It was consequently wiser for a plantation owner to invest his money in an African slave than in a European slave or indentured labourer. Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans, they ended up as the slaves of European masters! Due to these circumstantial factors, the burgeoning new societies of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white Europeans and a subjugated caste of black Africans. — Yuval Noah Harari

Well, it wasn't a holiday, but I had expected to do some sightseeing when I went to Haiti to film a series called 'True Horror' for Discovery. Before I arrived, our film crew were kidnapped and held at knifepoint. — Anthony Head

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

The African powers, child. The spirits. The loas. The orishas. The oldest ancestors. You will hear people from Haiti and Cuba and Brazil and so call them different names. You will even hear some names I ain't tell you, but we all mean the same thing. Them is the ones who does carry we prayers to God Father, for he too busy to listen to every single one of we on earth talking at he all the time. Each of we have a special one who is we father or mother, and no matter what we call it, whether Shango or Santeria or Voudun or what, we all doing the same thing. Serving the spirits. — Nalo Hopkinson

Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always. Always. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide