Ingrid Betancourt Quotes
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In a kidnapping, you leave behind a lot of your baggage, like arrogance and stubbornness.
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You don't master your fear. You're not able to say, 'I'm not going to be scared.' But what you can do is say, 'OK, I'm very very scared, but I have to do this and this and this.'
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I was in chains all the time, 24 hours a day, for three years. I tried to wear those chains with dignity, even if I felt that it was unbearable.
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I never say no to an ice cream.
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I owe everything to France.
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I think that the worst thing is realizing that mankind - that - that human beings can be so horrible to other human beings.
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I want to tell President Sarkozy - and through him, all the French people - that they were our support, our light.
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It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.
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I was forbidden to talk to my fellow hostages.
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France is my home; you are my family. I am carrying all of you in my heart.
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You are a free woman, and then you become a prisoner, and you receive all kinds of orders. Sit here, stand there. That's it. You just, you don't have the possibility of even moving to take your bag without asking for permission.
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We're humans. Why always turn human attitude into political behaviours? I hate that.
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I am not irresponsible.
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I have to forget in order to find peace in my soul and be able to forgive.
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I carry the voices of all my family within me, and they were with me there in the jungle.
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I had this belief that I couldn't just accept to be treated as an object. It was a problem of dignity.
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It's not easy to talk about things that are still hurting.
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I think that women are peacemakers by genetics, because we are the ones who stay at home and because we are the ones who suffer with the aftermath of war.
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When you have a chain around your neck, you have to keep your head down and try to accept your fate without succumbing entirely to humiliation, without forgetting who you are.
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A novel - it's also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye.
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I don't want to be submerged by depression.
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More than a victim, I am a survivor of a dehumanization process.
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I didn't want to accept that people would forget me, that the government wouldn't do anything to negotiate our freedom. After a year, I came to understand that not only had one year passed, many more would come.
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I love Colombia's military. I love my country.