Colombia Quotes

1. "B.C. sat back in his chair. "Whatever America needs, the world will supply. Cocaine? Colombia steps to the plate. Shortage of farmworkers, corn detasselers? Thank God for Mexico. Baseball players? Viva Dominicana. Need more interns? India, Philippines zindabad"
Author: Abraham Verghese

2. "The left is being funded primarily by the drug traffickers who provide this tax money and that's why the guerrillas in Colombia, unlike the guerrillas anywhere else in Latin America, have been able to survive for 40 years because they have a hard, solid source of income."
Author: Alma Guillermoprieto

3. "No one can feel as the owner of the country and no one can feel excluded from the right of property. We must all suffer Colombia."
Author: Alvaro Uribe

4. "I will protect all Colombians regardless of whether the attacks come from guerrillas or paramilitaries."
Author: Alvaro Uribe

5. "The basic dream of many Colombians is to have a secure nation, without exclusions, with equity, and without hatred."
Author: Alvaro Uribe

6. "Colombian humor is very black, very sarcastic."
Author: Barbet Schroeder

7. "Hallucinatory - that's just the way everyday life is, in Colombia. All the time, you say to yourself, did I just see that?"
Author: Barbet Schroeder

8. "I've been following what's happening in Colombia because it's the country of my childhood."
Author: Barbet Schroeder

9. "Colombia is in a risky position. They've got a peace process that's going nowhere, and a drug production problem that's skyrocketing."
Author: Barry McCaffrey

10. "It was apparent that the ladies vying to be Miss Colombia had to first go through a stringent competition of poise, talent, and debate on who had the best abs and biggest breasts to win the right to represent their department. They received lots of cheers from the crowds—and lots of open stares from all the police guarding the boulevard."
Author: Bryanna Plog

11. "At family gatherings in the United States, two off-limit subjects are almost always put together in the same phrase: no religion or politics. While in Colombia, the former was embraced ("What do you mean you aren't Catholic?") but the latter was taboo. While it may be the only reason that Colombia (or Columbia) makes the international news outside of prostitution or scandals, Colombia's political problems, drug trade, and civil conflicts are forbidden subjects for most Colombians."
Author: Bryanna Plog

12. "Colombians might live in one of best places in the world to grow coffee beans, yet their cups of coffee come from dehydrated granules in tiny plastic packages. This is the definition of tragedy."
Author: Bryanna Plog

13. "Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in east-central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn't yet met. It was a clear and eyeblue day, that day, as was the first day of this story, a few years ago in January, on Chicago's North Side, in the opulent shadow of Wrigley and with the wind coming low and searching off the jagged half-frozen lake."
Author: Dave Eggers

14. "How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much."
Author: David Mitchell

15. "Marquez was not born in Colombia.He was born in Macondo, And his Macondo is his La Mancha."
Author: Dejan Stojanovic

16. "Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru, Colombia and the Caribbean Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their heartsFor he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan."
Author: Dejan Stojanovic

17. "Nada funciona aquí. Ni la ley del talión ni la ley de Cristo. La primera, porque el estado ni la aplica ni la deja aplicar: ni raja ni presta el hacha como mi difunta mamá. La segunda porque es intrínsecamente perversa. Cristo es el gran introductor de la impunidad y el desorden en el mundo. Cuando tú vuelves a Colombia la otra mejilla, de un segundo trancazo te acaban de desprender la retina. Y una vez que no ves, te cascan de una puñalada en el corazón."
Author: Fernando Vallejo

18. "Yo, discípulo de sempiterno candidato a la presidencia doctor Goyeneche, discípulo a su vez del sabio español Pero Grullo, tengo para Colombia y su infinidad de males una expedita solución: que dejen atracar. Los atracadores se irán a gastar el dinero de su atraco a un cabaret; el dueño del cabaret se comprará un carro; la fábrica de carros venderá más; y al vender más empleará más obreros; y al haber más obreros habrá menos desempleo; y al acabarse el desempleo se acabarán los atracadores y los secuestros y los robos y los asaltos, y sonreirá la gente, e irán todos a la universidad, y acaso a este servidor le den un puesto, aunque sea limpiador de oficinas, y al final del año habrá ahorrado con qué comprarse su alfombra persa, para poder volar."
Author: Fernando Vallejo

19. "México, país civilizado, sólo matan lo preciso. Aquí no. Ve el cafre que maneja a un peatón cruzando la calle, y en vez de disminuir la velocidad acelera. Salta la liebre porque salta o se va a rendirle cuentas a Dios. Por eso viejos aquí casi no hay. En Colombia los viejos mueren jóvenes."
Author: Fernando Vallejo

20. "Me atrevo a pensar que es esta realidad descomunal, y no sólo su expresión literaria, la que este año ha merecido la atención de la Academia Sueca de la Letras. Una realidad que no es la del papel, sino que vive con nosotros y determina cada instante de nuestras incontables muertes cotidianas, y que sustenta un manantial de creación insaciable, pleno de desdicha y de belleza, del cual éste colombiano errante y nostálgico no es más que una cifra más señalada por la suerte. Poetas y mendigos, músicos y profetas, guerreros y malandrines, todas las criaturas de aquella realidad desaforada hemos tenido que pedirle muy poco a la imaginación, porque el desafío mayor para nosotros ha sido la insuficiencia de los recursos convencionales para hacer creíble nuestra vida. Este es, amigos, el nudo de nuestra soledad."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

21. "I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

22. "I started the 1998 World Cup with Teddy Sheringham up front but always planned for Michael Owen to face Colombia in our final group game because they defended square and a quick striker would be able to exploit the space behind them."
Author: Glenn Hoddle

23. "Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best."
Author: Jan Schakowsky

24. "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."
Author: Jean Bertrand Aristide

25. "If you were a Colombian, you would have your version of an empanada. If you are an Argentinean, you might find a dough that's baked and has a butter sheen on it. And then in Ecuador, you'll find more crispy-fried empanadas. So, yeah, every culture has their own version of empanadas."
Author: Jose Garces

26. "Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working."
Author: Juan Manuel Santos

27. "It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia."
Author: Juan Manuel Santos

28. "Colombia has a huge variety of plant and animal species, and we have enormous potential. Small and mid-sized companies should come to Colombia. From here, they have access to the entire Latin American market."
Author: Juan Manuel Santos

29. "Europe would be well advised to pay more attention to Latin America. The emerging economies are the engines of the global economy. Colombia has done too little to improve its reputation in Europe."
Author: Juan Manuel Santos

30. "I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions."
Author: Juan Manuel Santos

31. "In Colombia maybe 95% of the population follow Formula One. It's crazy."
Author: Juan Pablo Montoya

32. "I'm not more than a musician that enjoys what he does and a Colombian that dreams and fights for peace in his country."
Author: Juanes

33. "He whistles. Que viva Colombia. Hands you back the Book. You really should write the cheater's guide to love.You think?I do. It takes a while. You see the tall girl. You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half-life of love is forever. You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down. The next day you look at the new pages. For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever. It's a start, you say to the room. That's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace—and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get."
Author: Junot Díaz

34. "She calls herself Fleet ‘cause she used to be a flute player, back in the day. BC, you know?""British Colombia?"He looked sad. "No, Before Crack."
Author: Nalo Hopkinson

35. "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
Author: Neal Stephenson

36. "Baby names are a big debate in my family. Like true Colombian and Puerto Rican families, everybody and their mother is putting their two cents in - everything from Jose to Francisco to Victorio to Rain has been suggested."
Author: Paula Garces

37. "The fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or ‘feeling-thinking' to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano"
Author: Rob Brezsny

38. "I am trying to make my accent so it won't bother anyone, but I am not going to drive myself crazy trying to pretend I am an American girl when I am from Colombia."
Author: Shakira

39. "Listen, I didn't know how to make coffee when I came to the United States. Because in Colombia the maids do it."
Author: Sofia Vergara

40. "I'm Korean-American. Not Colombian. My parents are first-generation, and I'm like... in-between, because I moved over here when I was four or five."
Author: Steven Yeun

Colombia Quotes Pictures