Roméo Dallaire Quotes

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 ca...

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.

About Author

Roméo Antonius Dallaire (born June 25, 1946) is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire was a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.

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 o...

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...

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

Peux ce que veux. Allons-y.

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...

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.

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

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 ra...

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...

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

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.

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. Thenhe warned me that satisfaction would come at a grea...

Still, at its heart the Rwandan story is the story of the failure of humanity to heed a call for help from an endangered people.The international community, of which the UN is only a symbol, failed to...