Best Homelessness Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Getting through life without a lot of money, possessions, and/or friends is admirable, especially if it is by choice.”

“You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.”

Source: The Desire for Elsewhere

“Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.”

Source: The Desire for Elsewhere

“When we say ‘housing for all’ and the government responds with ‘the homeless are being temporarily housed in hotels to avoid the spread of the virus’, they are building a linguistic structure that defines the realm of the possible, that implicitly tells us to want less, to expect that total reconfiguration is out of the question. Like a poorly designed building, linguistic structures affect how we think, breathe, move and act. The mould sticks to our skin. We are familiar with a particular kind of linguistic structure: the preservation of a system of organisation that places capital before all else. This system ties our hands and feet together.”

Imagination Capitalism Housing Homelessness Linguistics

Book:Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

Source: Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

“She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.”

Source: Of Marriageable Age

“Street children are lovely blossoms just dropped from the tree after a heavy storm. Now they need to be put together with a needle and threads of security and shelter to live into a beautiful circle of life’s garland”

Children Kids Poverty Wise Words Storm Live Flowers Homeless Trees Homelessness Blossom Street Circle Of Life Blossoms Poverty Stricken Garland Street Kids Homelesskids Street Child

Author:Munia Khan

“Happiness lives in every corner of your home and if you are homeless, it lives under the leaves of trees, hiding beneath the sky's cloudiness. All you need to do is to find it with patience.”

Inspirational Home Wisdom Happiness Inspirational Quotes Tree Sky Wise Words Patience Clouds Happy Need Homeless Trees Homelessness Hideous Find Hide Hidden Cloudy Happyquotes Beneath

Author:Munia Khan

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”

Justice Poverty Racism Prison Greed Punishment Jail Unemployment Desperation Homelessness Retribution Imprisonment Incarceration Criminal Justice System Crimes Cycle Of Violence

Book:You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Homelessness is illegal. In my city no one is homeless although there are an increasing number of criminals living on the street. It was smart to turn an abandoned class into a criminal class, sometimes people feel sorry for the down and outs, they never feel sorry for criminals, it has been a great stabilizer.”

Poverty Inequality Homelessness Vagrancy Criminalisation Criminalization Of Homelessness

Book:Art and Lies

Source: Art and Lies

“What we’re seeing today is an emergency born less of poverty than prosperity. Families are not ‘falling’ into homelessness. They’re being pushed.”

Poverty Inequality Homelessness

Book:There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

Source: There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Junk food is appealing to the homeless not just because it’s cheap but because it can be bought in places where no one looks at them twice as they stand in fast moving lines to order and pay. This is important for them as they are very alive to being noticed, observed and – usually – judged. They don’t generally buy healthy little quinoa salads from M&S not just because they can’t afford them, but also because they’re embarrassed – people stare at them – they don’t really belong in M&S.”

Poverty Shame Homelessness Marginalization

Book:Four Feet Under: Thirty Untold Stories of Homelessness in London

Source: Four Feet Under: Thirty Untold Stories of Homelessness in London

“The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL, can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself; or an extended contemplation of the scripture in the title, which in the King James Bible reads as follows: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The painting can also inspire a physical response in the form of tears as it calls to mind its more earth-bound aspects; namely, the very serious plight of those who truly are homeless in this world, whether born into such a condition, or forced into it by poverty or war.”

Art Culture Justice Compassion Poverty Mercy Scripture Interpretation Homelessness Paintings

Book:Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

Source: Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“Poverty is what you see in the eyes of a Black child living in the squatter camp.Matsime Simon Mohapi”

Poverty Joblessness Homelessness Living Dead A State Of Absolute Humiliation Landlessness

Book:Poverty in the Land of Riches - South Africa

Source: Poverty in the Land of Riches - South Africa

“To occupy the time I talked with a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter who wore a collar and tie, and was on the road, he said, for lack of a set of tools. He kept a little aloof from the other tramps, and held himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary tastes, too, and carried one of Scott’s novels on all his wanderings. He told me he never entered a spike unless driven there by hunger, sleeping under hedges and behind ricks in preference. Along the south coast he had begged by day and slept in bathing-machines for weeks at a time. We talked of life on the road. He criticized the system which makes a tramp spend fourteen hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging the police. He spoke of his own case – six months at the public charge for want of three pounds’ worth of tools. It was idiotic, he said. Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, and what I thought of it. And at that he changed his tune immediately. I saw that I had awakened the pew-renter who sleeps in every English workman. Though he had been famished along with the rest, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather than given to the tramps. He admonished me quite severely. ‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too pleasant you’d have all the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum away. These tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum.’ I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating: ‘You don’t want to have any pity on these tramps – scum, they are. You don’t want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum.’ It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes.”

Poverty Homelessness Wastage

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“Homelessness is a serious issue in our country. We need to work together to do more to alleviate poverty”

Poverty South Africa Homelessness Right To Life Poverty Alleviation Change A Life David Sikhosana Foundation Dsf Global Mission Right To Shelter

Author:David Sikhosana

“I imagined I could have begged an old girlfriend from college to send money; enough of them had expressed ambivalence about their trust funds that this seemed a plausible path down which I might drag myself away from homelessness. But I’d sooner have hanged myself.”

Poverty Homelessness Immigrant Experience Homeless In America

Book:If I Survive You

Source: If I Survive You

“Smelled like home. Stink permeates homelessness: the smell of trash, the smell of dirty streets, of fire bins and piss and other people's body odor, the wet dog smell that saturates your clothes and bedding, the smell of rust and dirt and decay.”

Poverty Environment Despair Survival Decay Realism Homelessness Urban Life Street Life Sensory Experience

Book:Where the Monsters Live

Source: Where the Monsters Live

“The Dark Cloud Is the homelessness you see that makes you question the setup Is the annoying manner of those who don’t have an opinion and always say “Yup” Is the refugee agency that only cares about stealing money Is the Balkan mentality of shedding blood and mixing it with honey”

War Poverty Nationalism Immigrants Homelessness Refugees Balkans

Book:The Dark Cloud

Source: The Dark Cloud

“Humanitarian Arithmetic (Sonnet 1354) If it takes $300bn to end world hunger, and 7 trillion to fund the next AI wonder, how many people have to starve to death, to feed the appetite of the cyberworld? If Britain's NHS costs about $200bn, and US military costs 800 billion dollars, how many have to suffer from sickness, for the tribal chiefs to feel secure? If it takes $20bn to end homelessness in the US, and trillions to colonize Mars, how many have to sleep in cardboard boxes, for heirs of billionaires to breed on Mars? You don't need to be a Ramanujan or Euler, to solve this simple arithmetic equation. But you do need a living human heart, to take responsibility for the solution.”

Poverty Economy Economics Homelessness Peace Activist Medicare World Hunger Algorithm Sustainable Development Goals Global Goals

Author:Abhijit Naskar

“Carry no baggage, you cannot move forward living off the hurt from the past.”

Inspiration Faith Prayer Fiction Poverty Confidence Shelter Homelessness Housing Insecurity

Book:Amazing Faith

Source: Amazing Faith

“Fear is dangerous. It creates an environment in which it's acceptable to treat those experiencing poverty and homelessness with anger and hate. The first step to stopping this is to realize that this fear is unfounded and dangerous.”

Fear Poverty Anger Homelessness

Book:I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People

Source: I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People

“Another day is just a homelessness person's dream”

Philosophy Dream Poverty Sadness Anthony T Hincks Nightmare Homeless Homelessness Veitch Point Cook

Author:Anthony T. Hincks

“Don’t tell the wealthy that the nightly humming they hear in order to sleep is made possible from the distant wheels of a midnight cart being rolled by a man who dreams of a bed.”

Poverty Sadness Wealthy Homeless Humanitarianism Sad Quotes Homelessness The Goodbye Song

Book:The Goodbye Song

Source: The Goodbye Song

“Dear Yesteryear, I do not feel alone anymore. I have found love. Maybe I should say love has found me. Well, to be fair, we found each other. Yesterday, I didn’t have a home. Yesterday, I didn’t have a pillow where I could lay my head. Yesterday, it was hard to find peace. Yesterday, I wondered if morning would ever come. Yesterday, I was unable to love, dream, and trust. Yesterday, I didn’t understand life. Yesterday, I was walking in my shadow. I didn’t know if I had meaning or a purpose. I am healing from my yesteryears. However, I am still rough around the edges and still have a lot to learn. I used to be so empty inside, but now I have lovely people to fill my no-longer-empty arms. Yesterday, my path was different. I was confused, not knowing if I should go right or left— move forward or turn around. I do not know what life has in store, but I know for a fact that I do not have to worry about the deadly and narrow path anymore. Yesterday, my sun was blocked by my shadows and everything thing else that came along that didn’t serve me. However, today, the sun is shining brighter than it ever has in my entire life. Yesterday, I will never forget you. You’ve taught me many lessons. I was taught lessons that a young person should never experience or even know about. Some lessons in life leave permitted marks. There have been many lessons I’ve learned that have left so many scars on my heart, but life goes on. I use to be overwhelmed by hate, disbelief, and not knowing if I was going to make it. Now, I am surrounded by warm hugs, smiles, love, and peace. Yesteryear, you will never be forgotten. I am healing, and it is a beautiful thing.”

Inspirational Poetry Friendship Poverty Self Esteem Young Adult Adoption Homelessness Mental Health Awareness Foster Children

Book:Pinwheels and Dandelions