Roméo Dallaire QUOTES

1 " I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

2 " Where you are born should not dictate your potential as a human being. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

3 " If we don't harness their potential for good, their societies will continue to reap their capacity for evil. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

4 " The reason why we believe that change is possible is not because we are idealists but because we believe we have made it, so other people can make it as well. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

5 " I think that one of the benefits of optimism and idealism is that they lead you into things you would never have tried if you'd let yourself imagine how hard it was going to turn out to be. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

6 " Money follows interest, and interest is largely driven by media attention, which is more easily captured by the drama of conflict than by peace. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

7 " Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

8 " Are all humans human? Or are some more human than others? "

― Roméo Dallaire

9 " Peux ce que veux. Allons-y. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

10 " Though many desperately and relentlessly cling to old, divisive ideas in the face of a future that looks complex and uncertain, no one can legitimately portray themselves as members or practitioners of the one true faith, the superior race, the best culture. No one can say, with the image of the blue and green Earth floating in their heads, that others don't count as much as "we" do, that others don't hold the same status as we do, are not as significant as us, are ultimately just not as human as us. "

― Roméo Dallaire , They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

11 " The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes of the teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda, it is the rage I sensed in the hearts of the children of Sierra Leone, it is the rage I felt in crowds of ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and it is the rage that resulted in September 11. Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

12 " I have often been criticized for being an 'emotional' leader, for not being macho enough, but even during this early stage in my career, I believed that the magic of command lies in openness, in being both sympathetic to the troops and at the same time being apart, in always projecting supreme confidence in my own ability and in theirs to accomplish whatever task is set for us. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

13 " I was on the ground, I was in command, I had been given the mission, and I took the decision. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

14 " Still, I did not regret for a moment leaving the bright lights of Manhattan behind in favour of night skies so dark the stars seemed close enough to be street lights. In the recycled cabin air of the long flight back, I physically longed for Rwanda, its rich red earth, the smell of its wood fires and its vibrant humanity. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

15 " The people of Rwanda were not an insignificant black mass living in abject poverty in a place of no consequence. They were individuals like myself, like my family, with every right and expectation of any human who is a member of our tortured race. I was determined to persevere. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

16 " Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know. … Fifty to sixty thousand people walking in the rain and the mud to escape being killed, and seeing a person there beside the road dying. We saw lots of them dying. And lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes or innocent eyes, no laughing eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with my blue beret and they're saying, "What in the hell happened? We were moving towards peace. You were there as the guarantor" -- their interpretation -- "of the mandate. How come I'm dying here?" Those eyes dominated and they're absolutely right. How come I failed? How come my mission failed? How come as the commander who has the total responsibility-- We learn that, it's ingrained in us, because when we take responsibility it means the responsibility of life and death, of humans that we love. "

― Roméo Dallaire

17 " How do we pick and choose where to get involved? Canada and other peacekeeping nations have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them - a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil, a concept that some players on the international stage view as outmoded. Some governments regard the use of force itself as the greatest evil. Others define "good" as the pursuit of human rights and will opt to employ force when human rights are violated. As the nineties drew to a close and the new millennium dawned with no sign of an end to these ugly little wars, it was as if each troubling conflict we were faced with had to pass the test of whether we could "care" about it or "identify" with the victims before we'd get involved. "

― Roméo Dallaire

18 " Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges? "

― Roméo Dallaire

19 " If I decide to make a career in the army, he said, I would never be rich, but I would live one of the most satisfying lives there was to be had. Then
he warned me that satisfaction would come at a great cost to me and any family I might have. I should never expected to be thanked; a soldier, if he was going to be content, had to understand that no civilian, no government,
sometimes not even the army itself, would recognize the true nature of the scarifies he made. "

― Roméo Dallaire , Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

20 " Seismic change can happen over a lifetime, or in an instant. "

― Roméo Dallaire

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