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Homeless Quotes

Browse 592 quotes about Homeless.

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Homeless Quotes

“One of the things is that I've been very comfortable in every situation starting ministry in the inner city and ministering in places - Washington, D.C., feeding the homeless, the hurting, going to broken boys and girls. So culturally I understood all different aspects of life - from extremely wealthy to extreme poverty, socioeconomic differences, ethnic differences.”

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Author:Paula White
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“When I was in Afghanistan in 2007, I went from village to village where refugees had returned, and they were living out in the open under tents, sometimes completely exposed to the environment. And they were homeless, which meant they would lose children in the winter to the cold and in the summers in the extreme heat. It's extremely humiliating for them to be homeless, culturally it's very shameful.”

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Author:Khaled Hosseini
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“The bulk of our efforts [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] has focused on helping build permanent shelters for returning refugees who are homeless, living out in the open or in makeshift homes. This is an area of urgent need as Afghanistan's natural elements are quite harsh, with very hot summers, and freezing winters.”

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Author:Khaled Hosseini
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“My running mate, Ajamu Baraka, was out camping out with the homeless in Baltimore . We were both recently at the Standing Rock Sioux encampment where in fact we are both now, a warrant is out for our arrest for participating in civil disobedience to support this very critical stand being taken on behalf of our water, on behalf of human rights, on behalf of our climate.”

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Author:Jill Stein
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“I was teasing my brother that he was penniless, homeless, jobless. Right now in his life, racism isn't the central highlighting force: it's the world of work and economics. It doesn't mean that he isn't influenced by racism, but when he wakes up in the morning the thing that's driving his world is really issues of class, economics and power as they articulate themselves.”

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Author:Bell Hooks
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“What are a genuine pain in the ass are all the misconceptions and outright lies. I read somewhere that in 2004 I was homeless in Seattle and drinking heavily, which came as a shock since I've never been homeless and haven't had a drink since 1982. I've also heard SEVERAL times that I'm a card-carrying member of several white-supremacist groups, when the last group I belonged to was the Boy Scouts.”

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Author:Jim Goad
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“There are still many homeless trans folk wandering the streets. They are still harassed on the street by bystanders and police officers. We still face many administrative hurdles in every aspect of our lives. If anything, things are actually getting harder for us, because now there are people who are using our visibility as an excuse to say that we are already receiving fair and honest treatment, when the reality is that we are still in bad shape as a community.”

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Author:Chelsea Manning
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“I think that one of the visions that is closest to reality is the cardboard city in the subway station in Tokyo, which is based very closely on a series of documentary photographs of people living like that and of the contents of the boxes. Those are quite haunting because Tokyo homeless people reiterate the whole nature of living in Tokyo in these cardboard boxes, they're only slightly smaller than Tokyo apartments, and they have almost as many consumer goods. It's a nightmare of boxes within boxes.”

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Author:William Gibson
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“It is almost impossible to open a newspaper without reading something about the London housing market. House prices are rising at such a rate that the vast majority of Londoners can't afford to buy, are being forced out of the boroughs they grew up in, or in the worst cases, are being made homeless. If nothing is done, people will continue to be driven out of the city and London will cease to be a hub for creativity and entrepreneurship.”

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Author:David Lammy
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“You gotta remember I was homeless. Whenever I think I have something to complain about. I go outside, walk across the street and look at my home, and remind myself of the time I was living on the damn lakefront in a car full of garbage bags with clothes, and ask myself, "What do you possibly have to be upset about?" I have nothing to complain about.”

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Author:Michael Clarke Duncan
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“If you're a person with resources who is LGBT, you may have some problems with that - but, frankly, you'll probably have an apartment. If you're poor, if you're transgender, if you're a person of color, if you're HIV positive and you're homeless, the ability to act on desire, the ability to be safely somewhere to make love with anybody that you want to make love with is unlikely.”

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Author:Amber Hollibaugh
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“I think that America is an ideal place for the privileged homeless, who are used to different cultures. It's easiest and most accommodating because it is a country of exiles and immigrants and newcomers. There are no walls, in that sense. There is always the sense that traditions are being made as we speak. So you can slot yourself in. If you are living at a distance in society, this is one of the most congenial societies to live in.”

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Author:Pico Iyer
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“I wanna feed 5,000 like Jesus, I wanna build a community center where the homeless and less fortunate can come take a shower, get a hot meal and a change of clothes. Maybe not new clothes but some clean clothes. Those are my goals, my raps and goals haven't changed. I'm about helping somebody, I use my celebrity status for the good of mankind. That's what I do, so for all the Hip-Hop people, if they just pull from me the gold, they're missing so much.”

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Author:Mr. T
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“I really made the cartoon Life with Louie with one reason in mind: I didn't have a very good relationship with my dad, and we didn't all watch TV together like we should've, like you hope for, like you've seen on TV, and I wanted to make it for moms and dads and their kids. That was always my goal. And then I wanted to put real things in it. We did a thing about the homeless and won a Humanitas award for that.”

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Author:Louie Anderson
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“One of my favorite episodes in West Wing was the homeless man that died and they found, in the overcoat he was wearing, a card of the speechwriter, Toby. He had given that coat to the Goodwill and this guy had ended up wearing it, died in it and Toby went to his funeral. He turned out to be a Korean war veteran. It was our first Christmas episode and that was a true story - a member of the staff had done exactly that. So many of these stories were far better than any fiction.”

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Author:Martin Sheen
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“When someone who's been homeless and actually had to take meals on the handout or steal purses on the backs of park benches to be able to eat, not that that was right. My head was definitely not in the right place when I was out there using but when you share your greatest weaknesses and the most intimate parts of your story, I think it makes a real impact on people. I think what comes from the heart reaches the heart.”

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Author:Andrew Zimmern
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“Housing is where it all begins. Where you live determines everything from where you shop for food, to how safe your neighborhood is, to your kids' school, to whether you're exposed to toxic chemicals on a daily basis. And as a New Yorker, I found it impossible not to notice and be bothered by the huge number of homeless people in the city, as well as by the segregation and gentrification that's all around you.”

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Author:Solly Granatstein
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“My suspicion is that those who seem oblivious to suffering, whether it is nearby or in remote corners, are for the most part unaware, perhaps blinded by doctrine and ideology. For them, the answer is to develop a critical attitude toward articles of faith, secular or religious; to encourage their capacity to question, to explore, to view the world from the standpoint of others. And direct exposure is never very far away, wherever we live - perhaps the homeless person huddling in the cold or asking for a few pennies for food, or all too many more.”

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Author:Noam Chomsky
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“Life is precious, so I ought to spend my days, you know, making sandwiches for homeless people and tending to the elderly in hospice care. Life is precious, so I should give everything away, except that I live in the world. And in the world, I actually have needs and wants, and I value my needs and wants. And I live in the world, and I can't just go make sandwiches every day because I also have to take kids to school. I also have to, you know, write books because that's my livelihood.”

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Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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“Yahweh demanded justice for the poor, compassion and equality for foreigners and refugees, systemic redress for poverty, structural mechanisms to protect the homeless and family-less from abuse and destitution, fair and equitable distribution of land, integrity in the judicial system, humility, simplicity and morality in the government (as opposed to wealth, women and weapons), etc. etc. If you want that kind of society, you need to be faithful to the living God.”

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Author:Christopher J. H. Wright
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“I'm always satisfied with going to soup kitchens or homeless shelters. A big one for me is children's hospitals. I love spending time with kids, rooting for them, making them laugh. Any small act of kindness is just as important as a donation. So volunteer. Go out there and see how you can make a difference and help someone.”

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Author:Ashley Benson
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“The Republican Party has become more conservative. The Democratic Party has become marginally more liberal. There's almost no overlap in the middle, ideological overlap, in either house of Congress. That leaves moderates homeless. We have had a hollowing out of the middle in the U.S. Congress. There's less opportunity for compromise.”

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Author:Michael Gerson
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“I perform in art time and in real time, and you can't tell the difference - no one knows how to separate a real act from an art act in my work. When I lived on the street for a year, people only knew that I was homeless. They didn't know that I was an artist doing a piece. I have to use real time in my work. I do, however, have to find a subtle way of documenting real time, in order for people to have a response. That means punching into a work clock every hour in the case of one piece.”

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Author:Tehching Hsieh
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“My cousin Jerry Lucey and five other firefighters died in a warehouse fire in Worcester, Mass. - my hometown - right in the middle of our old neighborhood downtown when a homeless couple started a fire to keep warm and the entire building went up. My cousin died trying to save homeless people who had already left the building.”

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Author:Denis Leary
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