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Refugees Quotes

Browse 214 quotes about Refugees.

Refugees Quotes

“Meeting people whose life trajectories were so different from my own enlarged my way of thinking. Outside the school, arguments over refugees were raging, but the time I had spent inside this building showed me that those conversations were based on phantasms. People were debating their own fears. What I had witnessed taking place inside this school every day revealed the rhetoric for what it was: more propaganda than fact. Donald Trump appeared to believe his own assertions, but I hoped that in the years to come, more people would be able to recognize refugees for who they really were: simply the most vulnerable people on earth. Inside this school, where the reality of refugee resettlement was enacted every day, it was plain to see that seeking a new home took tremendous courage. And receiving those who had been displaced involved tremendous generosity. That’s what refugee resettlement was, I decided. Acts of courage met by acts of generosity. Despite how fear-based the national conversation had turned, there was nothing scary about what was happening at South. Getting to know the newcomer students had deepened my own life, and watching Mr. Williams work with all twenty-two of them at once with so much grace, dexterity, sensitivity, and affection had provided me with daily inspiration. I would even say that spending a year in room 142 had allowed me to witness something as close to holy as I’ve seen take place between human beings. I could only wish that in time, more people would be able to look past their fear of the stranger and experience the wonder of getting to know people from other parts of the globe. For as far as I could tell, the world was not going to stop producing refugees. The plain, irreducible fact of good people being made nomad by the millions through all the kinds of horror this world could produce seemed likely to prove the central moral challenge of our times. How did we want to meet that challenge? We could fill our hearts with fear or with hope. And the choice would affect more than just our own dispositions, for in choosing which seeds to sow, we would dictate the type of harvest. Surely the only harvest worth cultivating was the one Mr. Williams had been seeking: greater fluency, better understanding.”

FearUnderstandingEducationCourageLearningEmpathyGenerosityRefugeesLanguage LearningLanguages And Culture
Book:The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom
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“The global refugee crisis is indeed global. It isn’t a question of whether we should respond here (in the West) or there (at the crises’ points of origin), nor if we should address immediate needs or root causes. We can and must do all of the above.”

JusticeCompassionPovertySocietyInternationalRefugeesGlobalRefugee Crisis
Book:Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugees Crisis
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“Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it’s as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away.”

WarPovertyRefugees
Book:The Ultimate Safari
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“God created every man to be free. The ability to choose whether to live free or enslaved, right or wrong, happy or in fear is something called freewill. Every man was born with freewill. Some people use it, and some people use any excuse not to. Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. And in the end, when God asks you: "Who told you to kill one of my children?" And you tell him, "My leader." He will then ask you, "And are THEY your GOD?”

ChildrenWarGodEvilFearBornJusticeFreedomMilitaryCreationBirthSadConscienceMercySlaveHappyGoodImmigrationInnocentManBordersJudgementWrongFreeBadKillBirthrightRefugeesFreewillEnslavedEnslaveSpeaking To GodKilling HumansMeeting With God
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Here in Oklahoma, I understand why--why humans would sit behind a glass window and look in the faces of families running away from danger and dead sheep, and not feel anything. They think we're bad people who will come and take their stuff. Like when I won the tetherball tournament at recess against Trevor and I wouldn't have if I hadn't been there at all.”

FearImmigrantsRefugeesOklahomaNativismTetherball
Book:Everything Sad Is Untrue
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“In a refugee camp, it's the waiting that will kill you. The whole point of a refugee camp is that there are actual people trying to kill you. But really, it's the slow numbing death of hopelessness that does it. You have to imagine a room that's just a cement cube--nothing beautiful in it. If you're not careful, this is also what becomes of the parlor of your mind.”

FearWaitingHopelessnessRefugeesRefugee Camps
Book:Everything Sad Is Untrue
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“The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ecosystems so exotic that their bodies could hardly recognize them as life at all, isolated, exhausted, sometimes at the edge of their resources. And what they wanted was to send back help. He listened to their voices, saw the distress in their eyes. He couldn't help, but love them a little bit. Under the best conditions, disasters and plagues did that. It wasn't universally true. There would always be hoarders and price gouging, people who closed their doors to refugees and left them freezing and starving. But the impulse to help was there too. To carry a burden together, even if it meant having less for yourself. Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’t come without the other.”

InspirationalWarSacrificeHumanismHelping OthersRefugeesColoniesWar Relief
Book:Babylon’s Ashes
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“The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism.”

DiversityRacismSlaveryHumanismFranceParisMulticulturalismRefugeesBiracialMigrantsHuman Rights DayAntiracismHarlem RenaissanceMulticulturalismoParis AttacksDay To End RacismHuman Migrations
Book:Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
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“Softer memories once lived there. Where there is now burning. Where there is now blood. That was where childhood held you. Instead there is a forgetting. Instead there is a fireflood. You have never forgotten how home was more than just a language you grew inside your mouth before you said it in a way your tongue bled. When it lived as a place outside of your body and more than just in your heart and head. Where you once taught your children how to speak and walk and sang them lullabies till they fell asleep in their beds. How it has become a legend, just a holy story you pass from praying hands to praying hands. Where once you built hallowed walls there is now simply scorched earth and bloodied sands. A memory of the scared land that it once was before your whole world was set completely to flames How your heart breaks everyday because home, home no longer remembers how to say your name. Home was your refuge, and I wish they would see. because after cruelly taking it from you, they call you refugee.”

HomeRefugees
Author:Nikita Gill
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“no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled means something more than journey. no one crawls under fences no one wants to be beaten pitied no one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire and one prison guard in the night is better than a truckload of men who look like your father no one could take it no one could stomach it no one skin would be tough enough the go home blacks refugees dirty immigrants asylum seekers sucking our country dry niggers with their hands out they smell strange savage messed up their country and now they want to mess ours up how do the words the dirty looks roll off your backs maybe because the blow is softer than a limb torn off or the words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs or the insults are easier to swallow than rubble than bone than your child body in pieces. i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore unless home told you to quicken your legs leave your clothes behind crawl through the desert wade through the oceans drown save be hunger beg forget pride your survival is more important no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying- leave, run away from me now i dont know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here”

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Author:Warsan Shire
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“However they arrive, asylum seekers, immigrants, and refugees reach with outstretched hands toward safer, more promising shores. Welcoming these wayfarers rekindles our humanity and heals our broken parts. Only within the cords that bind us together do we find answers to age-old questions about despair and enmity, fear and alienation, justice and hope.”

InspirationalJusticeCompassionImmigrantsRefugeesHumanities
Book:How to Make a Life: A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted
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“I hope that the day never comes that I will need to flee my country in pursuit of safety or a better life. I pray that if I do, it’s not as a result of violence and that we don’t have to leave our lives behind us with nothing but a bag and any remaining family members by our side. If circumstances ever forced us to flee, I hope we are not called animals and treated as subhuman criminals simply because we want to live. Should it be so dire that we are forced to separate from our children with the hope they would find a better, safer life- if it were so very bad that I would rather they leave me, go on their own in a new country with nothing but faith and hope in their pocket, I hope the world will care for my priceless children and not discard them- simply let them fall through the cracks.”

WorldCareFamilyImmigrationRefugees
Author:Elizabeth Tambascio
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“At the end of the day, it’s not about who the refugees are, or if they are refugees at all. We are not helping “the refugees”, we care only about the People behind the label because we are all human beings. We create those borders inside our heads and pretend that we care about where each of us comes from, allowing those borders to limit our way of thinking and living.”

PeopleThinkingLoveHelpingHumanityHuman BeingsCaringBordersRefugees
Author:Ra'ad Ammari
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“Sonnet 1178 Five little rich tourists sink in a sub, Wallets open without limit on a search-n-rescue op. A 1000 migrants die each year tryna cross the sea, Borders tighten in sheer fear with no show of mercy. People are only worth saving if their savings is super healthy. 50 Shades would be a Hitchcock film if the sicko had no money. Empathy is a far cry, life is never the issue. While next-door-neighbor cries of hunger, Netflix wets more tissue.”

EmpathyCharityHypocrisyWealthyRich And PoorRefugeesHumanitarian CrisisEconomic DisparitySnobsMigrant Crisis
Book:Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat
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“America" Loans Interest rates Endless advertisements Usury and deception Countless heavy bodies filled with fear Migrant, refugee, and illegal bodies that came escaping America’s oppression in their own countries… America Depression, anxiety, and pain relief pills A political, media, and institutional matrix of power ran by one lobby… Credit cards Bankruptcy Debts Drugs The homeless Racism Weapons Strict security measures Suffocating any attempt for any meaningful change under the pretext of the homeland security… America Sanctions imposed on this country and that, Internal psychological sanctions imposed on a majority of the naïve who believe themselves to be free… America Tasteless fruit, vegetables, meats, eggs, and cheeses, injected with hormones, sprayed with pesticides and many other carcinogenic substances… America Houses that look beautiful from the outside, inhabited by people who are mostly lonely, going through psychological or nervous breakdowns, or perhaps wrestling with depression or hysteria, the luckiest of them are on daily pills to help them adapt to the psychological and spiritual death surrounding them from all sides… America Fruitless trees and scentless flowers, as if as a punishment or a curse from heaven upon those who stole the land from its native people, after erasing most of them… America Bills Sad letters in the mail, mostly from companies and advertisers wishing you a delightful day and great consumption, encouraging you to solve your problems with more consumption, and reminding you that you may die abruptly of loneliness or the toxins that you consume, and therefore, you must seriously consider purchasing your casket and the plot under which you will be buried… [Original poem published in Arabic on August 27, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

LonelinessDepressionRacismIllusionAmerican DreamColonialismAlienationAmerican CultureRefugeesArabic Poetry
Author:Louis Yako
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“Sitting down on a crate, Helen felt them, felt the vibrancy they had left behind like twilight after the sun is gone. She tried to picture their faces, their voices, but the details already blurred. They were slipping away from her, for they were never hers to keep. Turning her eyes to the ocean, Helen thought of all those boatloads of children on the water, needing somewhere warm and safe, and yet the ocean hadn’t listened to her plea. Everything she’d asked the universe had been ignored, snubbed. As she watched the waves, she tried to find peace in their steady heartbeat, but none came. The only thing she felt was betrayed. Betrayed and so utterly lonely.”

ChildrenLonelyBetrayalIgnoredRefugeesSingle LifeWw2World War TwoEvacuationFoster Parents
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“HOME no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled means something more than journey. no one crawls under fences no one wants to be beaten pitied no one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire and one prison guard in the night is better than a truckload of men who look like your father no one could take it no one could stomach it no one skin would be tough enough the go home blacks refugees dirty immigrants asylum seekers sucking our country dry niggers with their hands out they smell strange savage messed up their country and now they want to mess ours up how do the words the dirty looks roll off your backs maybe because the blow is softer than a limb torn off or the words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs or the insults are easier to swallow than rubble than bone than your child body in pieces. i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore unless home told you to quicken your legs leave your clothes behind crawl through the desert wade through the oceans drown save be hunger beg forget pride your survival is more important no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying- leave, run away from me now i dont know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here”

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Author:Warsan Shire
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“1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.”

WarPoliticsUnited StatesDemocracyMoralityDoctorsIndiaMurderIraqIsraelChinaCivil WarIranFascismForeign PolicyPakistanDiplomacyGreeceMarxismIndonesiaSlaughterAssassinationRefugeesInternational LawLebanonAthensChileBangladeshWar CrimesPartitionTurkeyHenry KissingerCyprusRichard NixonMissionariesCoup D éTatKurdistanJakartaSaddam Hussein19741975Foreign Policy Of The UsCentral Intelligence AgencyKurdish People1971ShahIran Iraq WarIraqi KurdistanWalter IsaacsonJuntaSalvador AllendeYahya KhanBangladesh Liberation WarChina Pakistan RelationsIndo Pakistani War Of 1971Mohammad Reza PahlaviNews LeaksPakistan United States Relations1971 Bangladesh Atrocities1972 Nixon Visit To China1973 Chilean Coup D EtatDoctors Of PhilosophyEast TimorEcclesiastical CoupGreek CypriotsIndonesian National Armed ForcesIsraeli Lebanese ConflictKurdish Iraqi ConflictMakarios IiiMilitary Of ChileMonroe LeighPortugualPortuguese EmpireRene SchneiderSchneider DoctrineSecond Kurdish Iraqi WarSino American RelationsThomas D BoyattTurkish Invasion Of Cyprus
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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