Paul Rusesabagina Quotations

Ladies and gentlemen, history keeps repeating itself but doesn't teach us any lessons. 'Never again' has turned into 'again and again and again.' So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, take Hotel Rwanda as a wake-up call and a message to be our messenger that people are the ones who can change what they want to change.

I said, 'I'm not coming with you, because so far I'm the only person who can negotiate with the killers,

I thought I was doing my right job, my day-to-day life, a manager's life. A manager's job.

We sat down in the ruins and we cried. The trip opened my eyes, it was very influential, ... Since then I've decided never to fight with a gun but with my mouth.

YOU have to make them feel ashamed to the point that they start to help us!

We saw the whole world closing their eyes and ears, leaving us alone to thugs and gangsters. The genocide took away a million people in a 100 days.

Africa needs you, ... to break out a dialogue. I'm telling you this because you in the West are lucky, you vote for your own leaders.

The whole country was smelling of dead bodies, flies. I went to see family. My mother-in-law was dead, her six children killed,

The most abusive words that I hear are 'never again,' ... Have we learned from history? I do not know.

I told them that if I am with you, I'll always regret what I've done and I don't ever want to regret,

For five minutes I was speechless, ... Then I told them that I didn't know how to use this gun, but even if I did I wouldn't kill these people

Talking about it is a relief. My message: Take Rwanda as a wake-up call. We need to stop the killing. The best solution is to talk and share. We ask the (United States) administration to intervene.

The world ignored Rwanda when we really needed it. Unfortunately, even now the world is still ignoring us.

If people see this footage, they'll say, 'Oh my God, that's terrible,' and they'll go on eating their dinners,

I am nothing special. Paul was a hotel manager. He will remain a hotel manager to the end.

"There is no greater gift to an insecure leader that quite matches a vague enemy who can be used to whip up fear and hatred among the population."

This is why I say that the individual's most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency.

Kindness is not an illusion and violence is not a rule. The true resting state of human affairs is not represented by a man hacking his neighbor into pieces with a machete. That is a sick aberration. No, the true state of human affairs is life as it ought to be lived.

We are all born with a powerful herd instinct and it can force otherwise rational people to act in inexplicable ways.

A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.

Everybody was willing to give me a job. But I wanted to do something different. I saw myself as an independent person, self-employed.

Our time here on the earth is short, and our chance to make a difference is tiny. For me the grinding blocks of history came together in such a way that I was able to take what fragile defense I had and hold in place for seventy-six days. If I was able to give much it was only because I had some useful things from my life to give. I am a hotel manager...my job never changed, even in a sea of fire.

If we want to change things, we must first change ourselves. If we want to play -- if we want to change the world -- we must first show up on the field to score.

Our days are so few, our existences so complicated. As long as we're breathing we shouldn't further complicate our lives.

History never seems to teach us any lessons. But that is no reason to give up.

Pastors started killing their church members and church members killed pastors. Husbands killed wives. It's a situation no one can describe.

Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense.

I think I'm a happy man, and I'm a blessed man. I have been able to adjust to any situation, whatever it was, in my life.