Tutsis Quotes & Sayings

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song. — Elvis Costello

I want a girl that can swallow my pride. — Frank Zappa

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

Rwanda's Muslim community is an example of a group (a full community rather than isolated individuals) that resisted the appeal of dangerous speech and other pressures to participate in the genocide. The Muslim community, which had both Hutu and Tutsi members, not only refused to participate in the genocide but actively opposed it. Its actions during the genocide included rescuing, hiding, and taking care of Muslim and non-Muslim Tutsis, and providing safe haven in mosques. Muslims also rejected commands to kill or reveal Tutsis hidden in their communities, on several occasions going so far as to fight back and be killed themselves. — Rachel Hilary Brown

So I feel that the experimental verdict is in: the world is weird, and we just have to learn to live with it. — Max Tegmark

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers. — Alain De Botton

I'm sure they're saddened by me, and I get frustrated with them. But I love them, and at the end of the day if they need me or if they need anything, I'm there for them. Family. — Brad Pitt

{President] Kayibanda's government [in Rwanda] continued the persecution against the Tutsis and began to make use of the media it controlled to launch a propaganda campaign against us. In a country where more than half the people cannot read or write and very few have televisions, radio is the dominant media. The fact that some newspapers were still printing the truth didn't matter much to the part of the population that couldn't read.

Most of the literate people were already politically aware. While an educated person might question what they read or hear from the media, the uneducated tend to accept it. The uneducated are more easily affected by threats and the emotional trauma that propaganda like this can create. — John Rucyahana

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seed of today. — Croft M. Pentz

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

I stared at the faces of the dead students. "You know, Zacharie, just looking at them, I can't tell you which ones were Tutsis, which Hutus." "Exactly!" said Deo in a loud whisper. Evidently, one was supposed to whisper here. "And neither could the killers!" "The killers couldn't see the difference, too," whispered Zacharie. "So they ask. Because they can't tell. We are the same people. — Tracy Kidder

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

The other thing you have to understand was that the message crept into our national consciousness very slowly. It did not happen all at once. We did not wake up one morning to hear it pouring out of the radio at full strength. It started with a sneering comment, the casual use of the term "cockroach," the almost humorous suggestion that Tutsis should be airmailed back to Ethiopia. Stripping the humanity from an entire group of people takes time. It is an attitude that requires cultivation, a series of small steps, daily tending. — Paul Rusesabagina

The last time I heard an orthodox Marxist statement that was music to my ears was from a member of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, during the mass slaughter in the country. 'The terms Hutu and Tutsi,' he said severely, 'are merely ideological constructs, describing different relationships to the means and mode of production.' But of course! — Christopher Hitchens

Just find out what other successful people do and do the same things until you get the same results. Learn from the experts. Wow! What an idea. Success — Brian Tracy

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. — Viktor E. Frankl

Be tolerant. Behold the unity of all faiths, cults, creeds and religions. Respect the views, opinions and sentiments of all. — Sivananda

Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonial Rwanda; it brought people together. — Philip Gourevitch

I got a story, ain't no moral, I let the bad guy win every now and then. — Billy Preston

Colonisation is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence. In addition to military and administrative chiefs and a veritable army of churchmen, the Belgians dispatched scientists to Rwanda. The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along. Tutsis had a 'nobler', more 'naturally' aristocratic dimensions than the 'coarse' and 'bestial' Hutus. On the 'nasal index' for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose. — Philip Gourevitch

To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it. There's a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you've spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives. — Mark Manson

For every question, there is a book. — Robert Goolrick

Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it's small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes - disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it'd be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I'd like to turn that one off for good. — Connie Willis

Role is something people play, model is something people make, both of those things are fake. — Tupac Shakur