Best 55 quotes in «refugee quotes» category

Home is where you feel more welcome, more secure, have more rights, where you are loved. This place can be any place even away from what you would normally call home.

…one of the coasts of a country that was a lifeboat, and that lifeboat was under siege by people who wanted to be taken on board. She thought to the southern shores of Italy and the boats that came up from the south, crammed with the desperate of North Africa striving to get into Europe. The vessels capsized under their human cargo; there were people in the water, their dream coming to a watery end. How could one turn one’s face against all of that? What sort of person would one have to be to sail past?

I have taken many lives in my life. Many children, perhaps husbands, wives, parents. Perhaps it is only just that this same violation was inflicted upon me. Perhaps it is just that one who lives a life of war becomes a refugee from it.

I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies.

Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.

Most humans are refugees in our countries because all our ancestors scattered across the globe from our homeland Africa.

My children wanted me to be brave. They did not understand that I have been running from the nightmare of what happened in Laos since I left. Or that there were things waiting for me in Thailand, little boys and lost dogs, that I knew I could never return to. They did not understand that the bravery they asked of me I never had in Laos or Thailand, and I could not have it on returning to those countries.

One of the strangest things about this journey was how whenever a smuggler or a driver gave us an instruction, we simply followed it. Whether it was get in the car, stay silent, follow me, eat this, shave your beard, hand over your passport - we simply followed orders. Without questioning or really even thinking, we put our lives into the hands of strangers, time and again. We had no choice. When they said come, we little lost sheep had to follow. It's very hard to explain the feeling of repeatedly putting your complete trust into the hands of strangers who see you as a commodity. Every time I did as one of these men asked, I had an acute awareness that this could be the last instruction I would ever follow. Each of these men had the power to take us to our deaths, at any time.

One small boy jumps over a table, pulls his jumper and shirt up, and turns his back to us to show where shrapnel wounded him when he was three. His classmates shriek with laughter.

People whose lives were determined for them by a group of politicians whose severing, dissecting and reattaching of their lands has turned their world into a monster that not even its creator can control.

Racism in impenetrable. Staying in America means always fighting. For our own sanity and safety, we must go.

You had to try to hang on to your name, though nobody cared about your name. You had to try and stay a person. You had to try not to become invisible. If you let go and fell back into the chaos you were gone, just a number in a unit, which was also a number. If you died, no one knew. If you gave up and disintegrated inside, no one knew.

Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and damned flowing through Europe is my family. And there is no time in the future in which they might be helped. The only time we have is now.

The very concept of home has become tarnished, misty, elusive. As never before, we are living in a rootless age. So many of us are refugees, living out of suitcases, car trunks, cardboard boxes, desperate to go back to a home that no longer exists.

This - not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture - is my inheritance: the inexplicable need ad extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex.

You see the water turned yellow colour when you go for bath---I have been kept in the lowest hole---you have kept me away from my relatives---I do not have the power to go out---will you perform magic for the dead---will the ghosts come out and sing songs of prayer for you---Do the dead feel your mercy inside their grave---is your magic visible only in darkness---will your religion be ever known in this country of oblivion---our flesh do not have health---we do not have peace in our bones---dread has uprooted us---here everybody wipes his face and says---I have not committed any sinful act---

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from burning buildings into the arms of loving families. When we flee from floods and earthquakes to sleep on blue mats in community centres. We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from abusive relationships, and shooters in cinemas and shopping centres. Sometimes it takes only a day for our countries to persecute us because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation. Sometimes it takes only a minute for the missiles to rain down and leave our towns in ruin and destitution. We are, each of us, refugees longing for that amniotic tranquillity dreaming of freedom and safety when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens. Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian, like our brothers and sisters, we are, each of us, refugees. The bombs fell in their cafés and squares where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed. Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral. We are, each of us, refugees. Don’t let stamped paper tell you differently. We’ve been fleeing for centuries because to stay means getting bullets in our heads because to stay means being hanged by our necks because to stay means being jailed, raped and left for dead. But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge so we don't board dinghies when we can’t swim so we don’t climb walls with snipers aimed at our chest so we don’t choose to remain and die instead. When home turns into hell, you, too, will run with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me! and then you’ll know for certain: you've always been a refugee.

Seeds of destruction take root in the human heart, and even among those who long for peace, they call to our darker instincts and urge us to violence.:

The most important thing is our dignity. If we have that we can survive on bread and water.

The notion that where one is from can be understood using what remains of that place opens up a highly sensitive and rich terrain that can help unpack belonging, especially if that place has now been rendered inaccessible by national borders.

This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed.

Why a slow death in a strange country if you can die on the threshold of your own house? Refugees don't exist. Only blown away people exist, people blown by the wind all over the world.

Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee.

For the price of resettling, one refugee in the United States, 12 could be resettled in a safe zone in their home region.

Despite very harsh living conditions and the trauma of what they went through, they [Sudanese refugees] had a lot of dignity

Every time, every time a tourist or an immigrant or a refugee shows up in another country there's a security risk.

I am grateful to the Germans in general, particularly those who displayed unending dedication to the refugees and who continue to do so.

Here's the plot of 'Interstellar.' Refugees - they're known as Democrats - they're looking for a new planet.

Hillary and I will do immigration enforcement and we'll vet refugees based on whether they're dangerous or not. We won't do it based on discriminating against you from the country you come from or the religion that you practice.

In Syria, Vladimir pUTIN sees the chance to make millions of refugees and weaponise them. The US has to take a lead in defending the values of the free world.

If we Europeans are not in a state to be able to solve the refugee crisis ourselves, if we only depend on Plan B with Turkey - then that is not simply an impression, it is the truth. But Europe cannot be susceptible to blackmail or be weak. I am, in any case, not in favor of having a deal with Turkey at any price.

Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.

I urge you to celebrate the extraordinary courage and contributions of refugees past and present.

Only 4 percent of the people who live here [Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania] are actually foreign-born. And even fewer of those are refugees. So there's not a whole lot of experience with refugees here.

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.

People have been born in refugee camps and they are getting tired of that.

The 21 Arab states that could easily have absorbed the original 650,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 refused to do so, even though their combined land mass was 700 times greater than that possessed by Israel. By contrast, the Jewish population of the new state was only 600,000, yet Israel willingly absorbed some 820,000 Jewish refugees from Europe.

President Trump talks about extreme vetting, and we actually do have extreme vetting when it comes to refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement is the most thorough, cumbersome, multilayered vetting system we have for the admission of anyone to the country.

There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces The guttural sorrow of the refugees.

We see everything, we see what's going on in Syria, we see what's going on with the refugees. What can you do about it? And we have to do something.

Turkey is doing an enormous amount in the refugee question, but it can't continue to pay for everything by itself. That is why we have to talk to Turkey about money.

We're going to renegotiate our disastrous trade deals and illegal immigration. Stop the massive inflow of refugees.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

Why is it that the U.S. has to take refugees? Why doesn't Saudi Arabia take more.

A human being can only take so much when their basic rights as a citizen of the earth are being denied to them – or sold at a high cost.

A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, 'History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!

FLIES IN DISGUISE Tell me, Have you Really seen Flies in a child's eyes Or heard their hungry cries In the middle Of the night? Don't lie. You can protest all you want About peace And genocide, But unless you are willing To take beatings for your fights, Your display of trendy showmanship Simply ain't right. Go on, Carry your useless signs About an issue the world Already abhors, But it's TRUE Heartfelt actions That will prevent Suits and Senators From creating Any more wars.

A nation ringed by walls will only imprison itself.

A refugee is someone who survived and who can create the future.

But unlike Mama, I would not go to heaven. My secrets padlocked the gates. I'd be a torn kite stuck in the dead branches of a tree, unable to fly.