Top 281 Haiti Quotes & Sayings

Haiti is the best cure against melancholy; it is also the most creative place for me to be. My productivity has increased enormously since I moved to Haiti. That's where I write my stories, develop my ideas and write nonstop, so it's a productive time, not a sleepy time.

Those of you who have been there [Haiti] know it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It has everything. It has everything above the ground, and everything under the ground.... It is an amazing place. I strongly recommend that whenever you get a chance, if you haven't been there, that you go to Haiti. I think it was a certain Queen of England who said that after her death "Calais" would be found written on her heart. When I die, I think that "Haiti" is going to be written on my heart.

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.

I have heard the screams of the people. I have heard and felt your desperation. Haiti will not perish. Haiti must not perish.

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.

My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.

In Haiti, it - people seemed - in my experience in Haiti, people are so open to photographs and journalism. And there doesn't seem to be the same sort of restrictions or wariness about the press that you would experience in Washington, for instance, on many levels.

Haiti is my country. The same way the Beatles are received in England - that's how Wyclef Jean is received in Haiti, do you know what I mean?

If you look at the Associated Press wires, there's a constant flow of information coming in. At that time I happened to have direct access to AP wires. The day the marines landed in Haiti and restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide there was a lot of excitement about the dedication to democracy and so on. But the day before the marines landed, when every journalist was looking at Haiti because it was assumed that something big was happening, the AP wires reported that then [Bill] Clinton administration had authorized Texaco to ship oil illegally to the military junta.

Salt is a powerful symbol in Haiti, as elsewhere. Salt of the earth, for example is an American phrase. In Haiti, myth and legend has it that if you are turned into a zombie, if someone gives you a taste of salt, then you can come back to life. And in the life of the fishermen, there are so many little things about salt that I wanted to incorporate. The salt in the air. The crackling of salt in the fire. There's all this damage, this peeling of the fishing boats from the sea salt. But there is also healing from it, sea baths that are supposed to heal all kinds of aches and wounds.

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.

It turns out that cholera is new to Haiti. It was inadvertently introduced by a group of U.N. peacekeepers stationed in central Haiti who had come from South Asia where it is endemic.

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.

We can change Haiti if we work together.

There is no shortcut to the development of Haiti.

If you love Black people, why are you destroying Haiti? If you love Black people, why did you, [Hillary] Clinton, stop them from the rice that they were producing in Haiti to feed themselves and other Caribbean nations? You put the rice industry out of business; and now rice is coming from Arkansas, chicken coming from Arkansas, when it once was growing right there in Haiti.

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.

The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.

Haiti looks like a bomb hit it.

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.

During the terrorist regime in Haiti in the 1990s, the CIA, under the administration of Bill Clinton, was reporting to Congress that oil shipments had been blocked from entering Haiti. That was just a lie. I was there. You could see the oil terminals being built and the ships coming in.

I'm the fifth president of Haiti to rule without a parliament.

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.

There is this split between the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So when I'm writing anything set in Haiti now, whether fiction or nonfiction, always in the back of my mind is how people, including some of my own family members, have been affected not just by history and by the present but also by the earthquake.

A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find.

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.

I had a house in Haiti, in the hills above the North Atlantic coast. The house appeared as if out of a dream: my dream to have a foothold in the country. Like many concepts do in Haiti, the phrase 'pied a terre' became literal, material.

I was at a little Haiti the other day in Florida. And I want to tell you, they hate the Clintons, because what's happened in Haiti with the Clinton Foundation is a disgrace. And you know it, and they know it, and everybody knows it.

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.

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

Haiti is not an easy place to fight disease, even in the best of times. That was true even before a devastating earthquake ravaged Haiti's capital and largest city, Port-au-Prince, in 2010.

Countries should think of Haiti not as a place where to do charity but a place where to invest and do business. And doing business in Haiti means poverty reduction.

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.

If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

The Attorney General made another astonishing claim, that there were Pakistani terrorists possibly coming on these boats from Haiti. No one has ever seen a Pakistani coming on a boat from Haiti yet.

We want to show the world Haiti can endure.

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.

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

Haiti has changed a lot.

The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador attain liberty, and inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States' independence, cannot die. Today, this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to rebuild Haiti.

It is the destiny of the people of Haiti to suffer.

We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax.

Everything in Haiti right now is a priority.

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always. Always.

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

I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.

After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.

Haiti is open for business!

The diiference is that in the private sector you work for yourself, and as Prime Minister I work for every single Haitian - inside Haiti and outside - and for all those who love Haiti as well.

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.'

Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.

I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

Haiti kind of gets a hold of you.

Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere. The earthquake and the hurricanes, it has devastated Haiti. Bill Clinton and I have been involved in trying to help Haiti for many years.

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.

Haiti is back on the path to democracy.

One of the things you don't have in Haiti is you don't have anybody on crack doing something completely out of - that's unpredictable. Even at the worst times in Haiti, the violence that had happened, the lack of security that happened, was largely predictable because it was politically tied.

Haiti is in desperate poverty.