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Homelessness Quotes

Browse 410 quotes about Homelessness.

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Homelessness Quotes

“Dear Wildest Dreams, Although I am trapped in sadness and sorrow, you are one of my favorite thoughts. You give me faith to dream. I imagine I am falling, but you catch me and cover me in your bed of flowers. You smell so sweet. You are so loving. When I think about you, no harm can come to me. You protect me from my quiet thoughts, and if someone tries to hurt me, you will pierce them with your thorns and coil them up in your invasive vines. Dear Wildest Dreams, this moment, right here and right now, is perfect. You are a safe place. I feel so calm when I am in your presence. I am so happy here, please stay. In my wildest dreams, I have a family who cares. We do the simplest things, such as go on family walks while I hold hands with my mom, dad, and Kace. We have dinner at the table, and my parents asked me about my day. I have my own room, and it is beautiful! I have a real bed and many books! I have fresh water to drink. I can soak in the bathtub, play with bubbles, and just relax. I have the perfect simple life. Dear Wildest Dreams, thank you for this moment. You made my day.”

InspirationalPoetryFriendshipPovertySelf EsteemYoung AdultAdoptionHomelessnessFoster ChildrenMentalhealthawareness
Book:Pinwheels and Dandelions
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“Life shouldn’t be a multiple-choice exam. However, it is, and it seems like the test I am given isn’t fair—because it has chosen the answers for me. A. Happiness B. Joy C. Love I shouldn’t have to choose; nobody should have to choose. I think life should be ‘All of the above.’ I know I am worthy of the great things life has to offer.”

InspirationalPoetryFriendshipPovertySelf EsteemYoung AdultAdoptionHomelessnessFoster ChildrenMentalhealthawareness
Book:Pinwheels and Dandelions
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“Today, as never before: the tramps, the down-and-outs, the shopping-bag ladies, the drifters and drunks. They range from the merely destitute to the wretchedly broken. Wherever you turn, they are there, in good neighborhoods and bad. Some beg with a semblance of pride. Give me this money, they seem to say, and soon I will be back there with the rest of you, rushing back and forth on my daily rounds. Others have given up hope of ever leaving their tramphood. They lie there sprawled out on the sidewalk with their hat, or cup, or box, not even bothering to look up at the passerby, too defeated even to thank the ones who drop a coin beside them. Still others try to work for the money they are given: the blind pencil sellers, the winos who wash the windshield of your car. Some tell stories, usually tragic accounts of their own lives, as if to give their benefactors something for their kindness—even if only words.”

PovertyKindnessHomelessnessDestituteTrampsCity Of GlassDestitutionPaul AusterNew York TrilogyThe New York Trilogy
Book:City of Glass
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“His mattress was his bathroom was his dinner plate And he fights for food against roaches and rats And the all-purpose pavement gets colder as the year gets late, So the roaches get bigger and the vermin turn to bats. We never have enough money to hand to cardboard holders, But always enough for extra açaí, bacon, or premium. And we bet they're scamming us, those damn freeloaders, But that's just it: a bet-- and premium is just premium. We guarantee the next has it covered, that car behind us, Ignoring how they like premium the same way we do. First judgements have always been our widespread virus, But truth is the property of man and that we can't lose.”

PovertyKindnessSocietyReflectionCrueltyJudgementHypocrisyServiceHomelessnessDonating
Book:Can I Tell You Something?
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“The trouble with good fortune is that people tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and as well for others, we think they must have done something to have brought it on themselves. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, what but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness, and to find equality where none may have existed in the past.”

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Book:Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation
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“The trouble with good fortune is that people tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, we think they must have done something to have brought it on themselves. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, what but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness, and to find equality where none may have existed in the past.”

PovertyInequalityHomelessness
Author:Ann Patchett
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“I'm employed by the universe. Since everywhere I go is the universe, I am always secure. Life has flourished for billions of years like this. I never knew such security before I gave up money. Wealth is what we are dependent upon for security. My wealth never leaves me. Do you think Bill Gates is more secure than I?”

WealthMoneyPovertySecurityLetting GoEmploymentLive In The MomentHomelessness20122009Suelo
Book:The Man Who Quit Money
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“Do not avert your eyes. It is important that you see this. It is important that you feel this.”

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Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.”

PovertyDomestic ViolenceHousingHomelessnessDomestic AbuseEvictionRenting
Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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“One in two recently evicted mothers reports multiple symptoms of clinical depression, double the rate of similar mothers who were not forced from their homes. Even after years pass, evicted mothers are less happy, energetic, and optimistic than their peers. When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in Psychiatric Services, identifying eviction as a “significant precursor of suicide.” The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. “Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.”

PovertyDepressionSuicideMental IllnessHomelessnessEviction
Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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“For almost a century, there has been broad consensus in America that families should spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Until recently, most renting families met this goal. But times have changed—in Milwaukee and across America. Every year in this country, people are evicted from their homes not by the tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands but by the millions.”

PovertyHousingHomelessnessEviction
Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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“But this house felt strange. Dave asked what was going on, and John explained that the name on the eviction order belonged to the mother of several of the children. She had died two months earlier, and the children had simply gone on living in the house, by themselves. As the movers swept through the rooms, Gray Eyes took charge, giving orders to the other children; the youngest was a boy of about eight or nine. Upstairs, the movers found ratty mattresses on the floor and empty liquor bottles displayed like trophies. In the damp basement, clothes were flung everywhere. The house and the yard were littered with trash. “Disgusting,” Tim said to the roaches scaling the kitchen wall. As the landlord changed the locks with a power drill and the movers pushed the contents of the house onto the wet curb, the children began to run around and laugh. When the move was done, the crew gathered by the trucks, instinctively stomping the ground to shake loose any stowaway roaches. Those who smoked reached for their packs. They didn’t know where the children would go, and they didn’t ask.”

PovertyHomelessnessEviction
Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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“While there are millions of hungry people all around the world, while there are thousands of homeless people in every country, while some continents are in a horrible poverty, while there are not enough schools, not enough hospitals in the entire world, building churches, mosques, synagogues or temples or spending money on guns, on war industry are the greatest treasons to humanity!”

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Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“Some people ate less food less often when they each had a home than they now do as hobos.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“I don’t want to wake up. I can’t feel the cold of life. I can’t feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what’s going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can’t feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we’re in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it’s not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it’s just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don’t fully understand.”

PovertyDreamsHomelessness
Book:The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
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“Blobfish, the guy who snapped a hamsters neck, myself, the homeless guy who has never thrown a punch (but has killed a fox) and Dickface, the man obsessed with trees and touching himself in public, follow an arrogant midget into the home of a pale creature I am certain will kill us all, to save the life of an ungrateful bastard parrot called Madness. The temperature drops further. A cold night for heroes.”

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Book:The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
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“The pursuit of wealth grants no friends. Perhaps, it is a lesson too many strive to learn on their own. One day, I looked at myself in the mirror and found someone much older but with few valuable memories to show for the elapsed time. I was alone. I started drinking. I lost everything. They say that we are all just three steps away from homelessness. They are right. I lost anyone who ever cared for me. I lost my mind. And I lost my money.” “I’m sorry for your losses…” offered Shane genuinely. “Don’t be sorry, kid. I do not regret my homelessness. It has taught me some important lessons. Instead, I regret the approach and decisions I took when I had money. I take pleasure in the small things now. Time is on my side. I do not expect you to understand it, but my life is longer than it was ever before.”

TimeFriendshipWealthValueHomelessness
Book:Darkness
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“The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carried out anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 to usher in the regime of Suharto. The film’s hook, which makes it compelling and accessible, is that the filmmakers get Anwar —one of the death-squad leaders, who murdered around a thousand communists using a wire rope—and his acolytes to reenact the killings and events around them on film in a variety of genres of their choosing. In the film’s most memorable sequence, Anwar—who is old now and actually really likable, a bit like Nelson Mandela, all soft and wrinkly with nice, fuzzy gray hair—for the purposes of a scene plays the role of a victim in one of the murders that he in real life carried out. A little way into it, he gets a bit tearful and distressed and, when discussing it with the filmmaker on camera in the next scene, reveals that he found the scene upsetting. The offcamera director asks the poignant question, “What do you think your victims must’ve felt like?” and Anwar initially almost fails to see the connection. Eventually, when the bloody obvious correlation hits him, he thinks it unlikely that his victims were as upset as he was, because he was “really” upset. The director, pressing the film’s point home, says, “Yeah but it must’ve been worse for them, because we were just pretending; for them it was real.” Evidently at this point the reality of the cruelty he has inflicted hits Anwar, because when they return to the concrete garden where the executions had taken place years before, he, on camera, begins to violently gag. This makes incredible viewing, as this literally visceral ejection of his self and sickness at his previous actions is a vivid catharsis. He gagged at what he’d done. After watching the film, I thought—as did probably everyone who saw it—how can people carry out violent murders by the thousand without it ever occurring to them that it is causing suffering? Surely someone with piano wire round their neck, being asphyxiated, must give off some recognizable signs? Like going “ouch” or “stop” or having blood come out of their throats while twitching and spluttering into perpetual slumber? What it must be is that in order to carry out that kind of brutal murder, you have to disengage with the empathetic aspect of your nature and cultivate an idea of the victim as different, inferior, and subhuman. The only way to understand how such inhumane behavior could be unthinkingly conducted is to look for comparable examples from our own lives. Our attitude to homelessness is apposite here. It isn’t difficult to envisage a species like us, only slightly more evolved, being universally appalled by our acceptance of homelessness. “What? You had sufficient housing, it cost less money to house them, and you just ignored the problem?” They’d be as astonished by our indifference as we are by the disconnected cruelty of Anwar.”

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Author:Russell Brand
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“Most human beings strongly believe that money is way less important than the life of a human being, but in reality five hundred, fifty, or even five dollars are way more important to the lives of most human beings than the lives of most human beings.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“The Reluctant Guest by Stewart Stafford My hand extended to an off-the-grid stray; Yet, still he scowls, And smacks it away. Near-gone from the world, His blindfold horizon quails, That veteran heart stiffens, As frozen asphalt exhales. A ghost at his own funeral, Thwarting hopes of a life— Institutionalised in cement, A fold in warm cardboard strife. Frontal assault to backdoor pivot: Dinner in his mother’s memory. A toothless grin at my tactic, A bridge to nourishing festivity. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

KindnessEmpathyRedemptionSocial IssuesHomelessnessHuman ConnectionContemporary PoetryVeteransChristmas DinnerVagrant
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Rembrandt’s embrace remained imprinted on my soul far more profoundly than any temporary expression of emotional support. It had brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home. The yearning for a lasting home, brought to consciousness by Rembrandt’s painting, grew deeper and stronger, somehow making the painter himself into a faithful companion and guide.”

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Book:The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
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