A Quote by Edwidge Danticat
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.
Related Quotes
Haiti was a French colony, but in 1804, the slaves rose up and defeated the French and formed the Republic. For the last 200 years, Haiti has had a very unfortunate history.
Haiti was founderd by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, and the only to aid Simón Bolívar in his struggle to liberate the indigenous people and slaves of Latin America from their colonial oppressors.
It may be a blessing in disguise...Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.
I think that things were getting really very bad a couple of years ago, and there's been a very significant change in response to that on the part of the security forces and the government, but particularly the army. And you see Pakistan actually fighting terrorism and terrorists in a much more wholehearted way than had been occurring previously. It's not anywhere close to over yet, but you've seen a big change in the antiterrorism campaign here.
Between Napoleon and his army, always choose Napoleon; because He can create another army, but his army cannot create a Napoleon!
I think it's just a coincidence that the North American teams are out. Most of us here have been playing in North America for a long time. Our knowledge of the big ice has been world championships here and there, same for the Canadians and the Americans. I don't see it as an advantage.
It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.
Napoleon - the people who were becoming Napoleon's generals realized that for him, it was not about spreading freedom and revolution; it was about creating a new empire with Napoleon the dictator or the emperor.
There was a brief moment, after Haiti's 2010 earthquake, when even Bill Clinton recognized what had been done to Haiti in the name of 'free trade': the destruction of local markets and rice production.
It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'
He[Napoleon] had destroyed only one thing: the Jacobin Revolution, the dream of equality, liberty and fraternity, and of the people rising in its majesty to shake off oppression. It was a more powerful myth than his, for after his fall it was this, and not his memory, which inspired the revolutions of the nineteenth century, even in his own country.
For two hundred years Haiti has been swimming upstream. We were the first country in which independence was won by a group of slaves - black slaves. Across the water, the country that had just achieved independence - the U.S. - still practiced slavery.
The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torch bearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.
My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I've represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I've seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response.
I often compared myself with a slave. Slaves were taken forcibly from Africa, and so was I. Slaves were sold a couple of times on their way to their final destination, and so was I. Slaves suddenly were assigned to somebody they didn't choose, and so was I.
No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.
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