Ingrid Betancourt Quotes

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Ingrid Betancourt

Profession : Politician

Birth : December 25, 1961

I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.

Ingrid Betancourt

Living in a jungle is not something easy; it's not something that you just adapt yourself to. And I think that in my case, I didn't want to adapt.

Ingrid Betancourt

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.

Ingrid Betancourt

The thing is that war is the opposite of negotiation. It's when you cannot negotiate, when you cannot talk, when you cannot reach agreements that then you have war.

Ingrid Betancourt

It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.

Ingrid Betancourt

These years after my liberation were years of reconstruction, and I think I made the right decisions... I mean, I lost everything: my life; my father died; I didn't know anything about my children.

Ingrid Betancourt

A novel - it's also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye.

Ingrid Betancourt

Sometimes you need other people to embody situations so that you can talk about things that for you are important. And I think that being able to hope for the future is what builds in us the strength to just get rid of things that, in the past, can hurt.

Ingrid Betancourt

In the jungle, faith also became something very real; it helped me to understand what was happening to me and changed my questions.

Ingrid Betancourt

As a Colombian, the only way I can relate to my country is through suffering. I hope that my children and my grandchildren will relate to the beautiful country in a way that it is positive and loving.

Ingrid Betancourt

On one hand, it seems strange that a country that has suffered so much from violence and war would be debating if they want peace or not. But in Colombia, a part of society is deeply connected with the war as a means of making a living.

Ingrid Betancourt

I called my party the Green Oxygen party because Colombians were choking.

Ingrid Betancourt

At first, I didn't want to accept that I had been abducted. I kept thinking, 'Next week, I'll be freed.'

Ingrid Betancourt

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.

Ingrid Betancourt

We're humans. Why always turn human attitude into political behaviours? I hate that.

Ingrid Betancourt

Like in every peace process, and especially in Colombia, there all kinds of problems that will come through. Not only is the process by itself very complicated but it has lots of underground complications.

Ingrid Betancourt

Reconciliation is a national decision that has to be debated and a consensus made among Colombians.

Ingrid Betancourt

You only can rest when have the truth, even when it's horrible.

Ingrid Betancourt