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Refugees Quotes

Browse 214 quotes about Refugees.

Refugees Quotes

“The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.”

WarNationalismMigrationRefugeesCurrent EventsForced Migration
Book:Exit West
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“Early on Captain Gribble could see the devastating effect that the thousands of desperate refugees were having on the people living in the jungle - fleeing through the Kachin and Naga villages and crowding into the houses.”

WarHistoryCuriosityCriminalsInvestigationDesperationWwiiRefugeesSoviet HistoryNorthern Burma
Book:EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942
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“(Donor Countries) When are we going to understand that donor countries never give anything for free? When are we going to realize that only those with the largest role in destruction offer themselves as benefactors? They donate merely to reshape societies and ravaged lands according to their whims and desires… Their sole aim is to keep the defeated, the marginalized, the disempowered, and the impoverished in that state for as long as possible… When are we going to see that the quickest way to name the world’s greatest criminals is simply to scan the list of donor countries? November 12, 2022”

WarDevelopmentExploitationImperialismThird WorldRefugeesReconstructionDecolonizationArabic PoetryPlundering
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“A Sweet Woman from a War-Torn Country” In her exile, they often describe her as that ‘sweet woman from a war-torn country.’ They don’t know she loved smelling roses, picking spring wildflowers, and bringing them home after long walks. They don’t know about the first kiss her lover stole during a church power outage on that Easter evening— before the generators came on. They don’t know the long hours she spent under the ancient walnut tree in her village, waiting for her grandfather’s call to share freshly baked pita with ghee and honey. They don’t know about her grandmother’s mixed grains, prepared each year before Easter fasting began. In exile, they try to be kind, telling her she now lives in a ‘safe haven.’ They assume her silence comes from poor language skills or simple agreement with them. They don’t know life’s shocks have silenced her forever. Now she presses her ear against the cold window glass of her apartment, listening to the wind’s mournful cry outside. They remind her she’s among people who honor all values, beliefs, religions, and ethnicities— but she has learned it’s all too late. She no longer needs assurances. Occasionally, all she asks for is a sincere hand on her shoulder or around her neck, to remind her that nothing lasts, that this too shall pass. [Published on April 7, 2023 on CounterPunch.org]”

WarLossSorrowLongingExileAlienationRefugeesArabic PoetryArabic Literature
Author:Louis Yako
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“The current system for refugees who remain in their region of origin is a disaster. It is premised upon an almost exclusively 'humanitarian' response. A system designed for the emergency phase - to offer an immediate lifeline - ends up enduring year after year, sometimes decade after decade. External provision of food, clothing, and shelter is absolutely essential in the aftermath of having to run for your life. But over time, if it is provided as a substitute for access to jobs, education, and other opportunities, humanitarian aid soon undermines human dignity and autonomy.”

HumanitarianRefugeRefugeeAutonomyRefugeesRefugee CrisisHumanitarian AidRefugee CampsInternational Aid
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“For the period that refugees are in limbo, we should be creating an enabling environment that nurtures rather than debilitates people's ability to contribute in exile and when they ultimately go home. This should involve all of the things that allow people to thrive and contribute rather than merely survive: education, the right to work, electricity, connectivity, transportation, access to capital.”

FreedomRefugeRefugeeAutonomyRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“If our native country had become lawless, then surely, nothing was ‘wrong’ or ‘corrupt’ about us seeking refuge or citizenship in another country. At least we deserved the right to try.”

HopeFreedomBetter LifeOvercoming AdversityRefugees
Book:Good Morning, Hope: A True Story of Refugee Twin Sisters and Their Triumph over War, Poverty, and Heartbreak
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“Refugees are here because they have no choice. They also bring enormous gifts and talents, as Tung did. They just need an opportunity. I hope our story inspires others to understand that people from different backgrounds can find common ground if we just listen to each other. We can all be bigger than our individual selves. We all have tremendous power to change the lives of others and help the world become more mixed and accepting ... Everyone can get to know people who are different than they are. Everyone can help where they see a need. We all have stories to tell, and the best thing we can do for ourselves and the world is to listen to each other.”

DifferentStoriesUnderstandingAcceptanceImmigrationDialogueRefugeeRefugees
Book:Mango & Peppercorns: A Memoir of Food, an Unlikely Family, and the American Dream
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“The story always starts in the same way when people ask me the simple, yet most difficult question to answer: “where are you from?” I often wonder why of all questions people start with this one that has become the hardest for me and countless other exiled people to answer. The question is especially hard when asked in crowded and fast-paced places, or during quick encounters which make a short answer inadequate and a long one potentially uncalled for…I thought to myself: why is it that the first thing people want to know about me is where I am from? If they only knew where I am from, they would perhaps know that where I am from—Iraq—happens to also be the deepest wound on the geography of my body and soul, and so they would tread gently on my wound by not asking that question in the first place. Is there something in my eyes, something written on my forehead, something in my looks, or some marks inscribed on my other body parts that immediately tell people that I am from a place that lost itself and lost me to exile on a cold, dark, and sad winter night? Why don’t these strangers just start with the more common and safer usual remarks about the weather being nice, dreadful, or whatever? Of all questions, “where are you from,” is the most delicate and complicated for people who have lost their home and all the things they loved.”

LossRacismImmigrationBelongingExileAlienationRefugeesRacial ProfilingOriginProfiling
Author:Louis Yako
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“We are not meant to be in this country. We did not want to come. We were forced to flee or die. Americans perceive desperate brown masses swarming at their golden shores, wildly inventing claims of persecution for the opportunity to flourish in this prosperous land. The view from beneath the bridge is somewhat different: reluctant refugees with an aching love of their forsaken homeland, of a homeland that has forsaken them, refugees who desire nothing more than to be home again.”

LongingImmigrationHomelandRefugeesHaitiHomesickness
Author:Edwidge Danticat
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“Others, however, would look over the children as if they were produce. They’d only speak to the nearest officer, never lowering their eyes to the young ones. Instead, they looked down their noses as though to distance themselves. “I’ll take these,” Helen would see them mouth, waving a finger above the small heads. It was a moment the children would have branded on their minds, Helen was sure of it, and the pain of it turned her stomach to lead.”

ChildrenTraumaWorld War IiWorld War 2Foster ChildrenRefugeesJudging OthersWw2EvacuationChild Evacuation
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“It takes a lot of confidence, and self-love and self-worth to realize that you are capable. And that you have every right to leave your lane, and to do things in the same way that other people do.”

LifeMotivationLife QuotesMotivational QuotesSelf EsteemConfidenceSelf LoveAchievementSelf WorthDisabilityMotivational InspirationalEntitledBlindnessYour DestinyYour LifeStereotypesBirthrightRefugeesOvercoming Challenges QuotesOvercoming ObstaclesPrejudicesAim HighSelf Worth QuotesDisability QuotesLow ExpectationsStereotypingAim HigherDifferently AbledMake Your Own PathYour RightsOvercoming StereotypesBeing Looked Down OnChoose Your LifeMake Your Own LifeOvercoming Expectations
Author:Allan Hennessy
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“No one would choose to crawl under fences, beaten until your shadow leaves, raped, forced off the boat because you are darker, drowned, sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, pitied. No one would choose to make a refugee camp home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, finding prison everywhere. And if you were to survive, greeted on the other side--Go home Blacks, dirty refugees, sucking our country dry of milk, dark with their hands out, smell strange, savage, look what they've done to their own countries, what will they do to ours?”

PoetryDangerPoemRacismPrejudiceImmigrationRefugeesEmigration
Book:Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
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“Creating opportunities for self-reliance is not in itself a long-term solution for refugees, but it is an important step towards all of the main long-term solutions: repatriation, local integration, or resettlement. This is because offering people autonomy and economic opportunity is likely to empower them to better contribute to whichever society into which they are ultimately assimilated. It can make refugees' eventual return more sustainable because they will return with the skills and motivation to rebuild their country of origin. It can make people better equipped to contribute to a new society once resettled. And it can make them a more desirable resettlement prospect because of their ability to find work and live autonomously.”

SocietyRefugeeRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“His mouth went dry and for a split second he had a metallic taste on the sides of his tongue. He stood, turned, and gulped. A vision had appeared from somewhere. Was she real? She was tall, with long, glossy light-gold hair surrounding a perfectly shaped face. The front of her silk white robe was open down to a delightful cleavage where a long silver cross hung. As she walked slowly past Alec to sit at the desk, the robe parted for a fleeting glimpse of her leg. A scent of lily of the valley meandered over him. A hand with long graceful fingers indicated for him to sit again in his chair. She was real! She was, without doubt, the most beautiful woman Alec had ever seen.”

BetrayalMelancholySymbolismRefugeesLove And LossDetective FictionEmotional ComplexityFirsthand AccountsCriminal MastermindsChurch Murder
Book:The Wasp Trap
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“I have grown up listening to my grandparents’ stories about ‘the other side’ of the border. But, as a child, this other side didn’t quite register as Pakistan, or not-India, but rather as some mythic land devoid of geographic borders, ethnicity and nationality. In fact, through their stories, I imagined it as a land with mango orchards, joint families, village settlements, endless lengths of ancestral fields extending into the horizon, and quaint local bazaars teeming with excitement on festive days. As a result, the history of my grandparents’ early lives in what became Pakistan essentially came across as a very idyllic, somewhat rural, version of happiness.”

HistoryChildhoodIndiaPakistanMigrationRefugeesPartitionPartition 1947
Author:Aanchal Malhotra
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“There never was a real thanksgiving where the pilgrims welcomed the native americans to join them for a meal. And no amount of fairytale can change history. But what we can do is, start a tradition of real thanksgiving, by welcoming the persecuted and the discriminated into our hearts and accepting them as our family.”

American DreamAmerican HistoryRefugeesSystemic RacismIllegal ImmigrantsNative AmericansThanksgiving DinnerThanksgiving QuotesHate CrimesLand Of Liberty
Book:The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo
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“The founders of America were more criminal than modern immigrants – you know why – because the founders of America didn’t only enter this land illegally, but after entering they drove the natives out of their own home, whereas all that the immigrants of today want is to have a better life for their family. Now tell me – who are the real criminals?”

American DreamAmerican HistoryUnited States Of AmericaRefugeeAmerican CultureRefugeesAmericanSystemic RacismIllegal ImmigrantsIllegal Immigration
Book:Generation Corazon: Nationalism is Terrorism
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“[W]ithin a generation, the Roman order was shaken to its core and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, 'vanished like shadows'. In 376, a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire's Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens - the one who had received them - along with two-thirds of his army[.]”

RomeMulticulturalismRevoltBarbariansRefugeesAsylum
Book:The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
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“Typical white man behavior, Ms. Mori said. Have you ever noticed how a white man can learn a few words of some Asian language and we just eat it up? He could ask for a glass of water and we’d treat him like Einstein. Sonny smiled and wrote that down, too. You’ve been here longer than we have, Ms. Mori, he said with some admiration. Have you noticed that when we Asians speak English, it better be nearly perfect or someone’s going to make fun of our accent? It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, Ms. Mori said. White people will always think we’re foreigners. But isn’t there another side to that? I said, my words a little slurred from the cognac in my bloodstream. If we speak perfect English, then Americans trust us. It makes it easier for them to think we’re one of them.”

ImmigrantsForeignersRefugeesWhitesLanguagesAsiansAsian Americans
Book:The Sympathizer
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“I might have been just half an Asian, but in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren’t. Funnily enough, I had never felt inferior because of my race during my foreign student days. I was foreign by definition and therefore was treated as a guest. But now, even though I was a card-carrying American with a driver’s license, Social Security card, and resident alien permit, Violet still considered me as foreign, and this misrecognition punctured the smooth skin of my self-confidence. Was I just being paranoid, that all-American characteristic? Maybe Violet was stricken with colorblindness, the willful inability to distinguish between white and any other color, the only infirmity Americans wished for themselves.”

AmericaRaceUnited StatesRacismImmigrantsRace RelationsForeignersRefugeesAsiansAsian Americans
Book:The Sympathizer
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“Ukanda wa Gaza ni jimbo lenye miji minne na kambi mbalimbali za wakimbizi za Umoja wa Mataifa – lenye urefu wa kati ya kilometa 41 au maili 25 na lenye upana wa kati ya kilometa 6 mpaka 12 au maili 3.7 mpaka 7.5, pamoja na eneo la jumla la kilometa za mraba 365 au maili za mraba 141. Jimbo hili liliwahi kutawaliwa na Wamisri, Wakaanani, Waisraeli, Wasiria, Wababelonia, Wagiriki, Warumi, Waturuki, Waingereza, na Wapalestina, na limekuwa uwanja wa vita kwa karne nyingi kwa sababu za kidini na kihistoria. Ukanda wa Gaza uko chini ya Palestina. Uko chini ya serikali ya Hamas.”

GovernmentReligionHistoryTownsBritishUnited NationsHistoriaRefugeesHamasBattlefieldPalestiniansEgyptiansOttomansGaza StripGreeksSerikaliAssyriansIsraelitesDiniProvinceUkanda Wa GazaBabyloniansCanaanitesUmoja Wa MataifaWaisraeliWamisri12 Kilometers141 Square Miles25 Miles3 7 Miles365 Square Kilometers41 Kilometers6 Kilometers7 5 MilesJimboKilometa 12Kilometa 41Kilometa 6Kilometa Za Mraba 365Maili 25Maili 3 7Maili 7 5Maili Za Mraba 141MijiUwanja Wa VitaWababeloniaWagirikiWaingerezaWakaananiWakimbiziWapalestinaWasiriaWaturuki
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“Moi, le clandestin, je leur rappelle cela. Le vide. Le hasard qui les fonde. A tous. C’est pour ça qu’ils me haïssent. Parce que je rode dans leurs villes, parce que je squatte leurs bâtiments désaffectés, parce que j’accepte le travail qu’ils refusent, je leur dis, aux Européens, que j’aimerais être à leur place, que les privilèges que le sort aveugle leur a donnés, je voudrais les acquérir : en face de moi, ils réalisent qu’ils ont de la chance, qu’ils ont tiré un bon numéro, que le couperet fatal leur est passé au ras des fesses, et se souvenir de cette première et constitutive fragilité les glace, les paralyse. Car les hommes tentent, pour oublier le vide, de se donner de la consistance, de croire qu’ils appartiennent pour des raisons profondes, immuables, à une langue, une nation, une région, une race, une histoire, une morale, une histoire, une idéologie, une religion. Or malgré ces maquillages, chaque fois que l’homme s’analyse, ou chaque fois qu’un clandestin s’approche de lui, les illusions s’effacent, il aperçoit le vide : il aurait pu ne pas être ainsi, ne pas être italien, ne pas être chrétien, ne pas… Les identités qu’il cumule et qui lui accordent de la densité, il sait au fond de lui qu’il s’est borné à les recevoir, puis à les transmettre. Il n’est que le sable qu’on a versé en lui ; de lui-même, il n’est rien.”

IdentityImmigrationRefugeesClandestine
Book:Ulysse from Bagdad
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“Refugees carry culture, Colonizers carry infection. Colonizers are the virus, Refugees are civilization. Refugees are practicing healers, living testament of wounds to ointment. Colonizers are proof of darwinism, that from monkeys comes the human race.”

ImmigrantsGenocideColonialismImperialismRefugeesColonial HistoryRefugee CrisisMassacreIndigenous RightsColonizers
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“Refugees & Colonizers (The Sonnet) Refugees carry culture, Colonizers carry infection. Colonizers are the virus, Refugees are civilization. Refugees live on hope, Colonizers thrive on greed. Refugees dream of acceptance, Colonizers dream supremacy. Refugees are the true free and brave, they carry within the silver lining. There's nothing brave about genocide, no matter the whitewashed thanksgiving. Refugees are practicing healers, living testament of wounds to ointment. Colonizers are proof of darwinism, that from monkeys comes the human race.”

ImmigrantsGenocideColonialismImperialismRefugeesColonial HistoryRefugee CrisisMassacreIndigenous RightsColonizers
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“In our hearts we know that with a different fate, we, too, could be in the ranks of the dispossessed, stripped of our identities and belonging nowhere. The refugee becomes a sinister symbol of what can quickly happen once personhood is denied and people are transformed into disposable units of contemptible impediments to the greed or power-mongering of others.”

PoliticsPowerGreedExploitationRefugeesLoss Of Identity
Book:Person-Centred Therapy Today: New Frontiers in Theory and Practice
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“Ramadan was one of more than a million refugees and migrants who took boats and flimsy dinghies to European shores in 2015. Along with forty-seven others, most of whom were Syrian, he crossed the Aegean in an inflatable raft that he estimates was made for a maximum load of twenty-five people. ‘There were so many children on it. We went out in the night. The kids were crying. We kept telling them, ‘See the light there in the distance? That’s where we are going.’” Four hours later, they landed, the boat already halfway full of water and on the brink of sinking. They emerged onto the rock shores and made their way back to solid land after, as Ramadan put it, seeing death yet again.”

SyriaGreeceRefugeesAnti Fascism
Book:Alerta! Alerta!: Snapshots of Europe's Anti-fascist Struggle
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“While many Europeans made world headlines when they rolled out the red carpet for refugees and migrants fleeing war and economic deprivation, the influx of arrivals also provided the hardline right with a renewed voice. “People coming from this war will act a certain way, so it’s not just the fault of Germans. But we aren’t animals.” Ramadan, like hundreds of thousands of others, waited eagerly to find out if his family would be able to join him. In the meantime, he spent each day waiting for his wife to call, waiting for another temporary assurance that none of his relatives had died.”

GermanyRefugeesRefugee CrisisAnti FascismSyrian Civil War
Book:Alerta! Alerta!: Snapshots of Europe's Anti-fascist Struggle
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“Being an immigrant is not a status but a state of mind. It doesn’t stop when you “assimilate” or “integrate” or when you go from being an “outsider” to an “insider.” It is what you think of yourself. You only really stop being an immigrant when you reject other immigrants and try to slam the door in their faces when they try to emulate you.”

ImmigrantsState Of MindOutsidersIntegrationAssimilationRefugeesInsidersImmigrant ExperienceImmigrantImmigrant State Of Mind
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I feel that for white America to understand the significance of the problem of the Negro will take a bigger and tougher America than any we have yet known. I feel that America's past is too shallow, her national character too superficially optimistic, her very morality too suffused with color hate for her to accomplish so vast and complex a task. Culturally the Negro represents a paradox: Though he is an organic part of the nation, he is excluded by the ride and direction of American culture. Frankly, it is felt to be right to exclude him, and it if felt to be wrong to admit him freely. Therefore if, within the confines of its present culture, the nation ever seeks to purge itself of its color hate, it will find itself at war with itself, convulsed by a spasm of emotional and moral confusion. If the nation ever finds itself examining its real relation to the Negro, it will find itself doing infinitely more than that; for the anti-Negro attitude of whites represents but a tiny part - though a symbolically significant one - of the moral attitude of the nation. Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness. Am I damning my native land? No; for I, too, share these faults of character! And I really do not think that America, adolescent and cocksure, a stranger to suffering and travail, an enemy of passion and sacrifice, is ready to probe into its most fundamental beliefs.”

RacismSlaveryImmigrationCivil RightsImmigrantsAmerican HistoryLgbtqRacism In AmericaRefugeesLgbtqiaRacial PrejudiceMelting PotBlacklivesmatter
Book:Black Boy
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“Loss in Vietnam radicalized a generation of veterans, pushing many into the ranks of white-supremacist groups. Ronald Reagan, as the standard bearer of an ascendant New Right, effectively tapped into this radicalization, which helped lift him to victory in his 1980 presidential campaign. Once he was in office, Reagan's re-escalation of the Cold War allowed him to contain the radicalization, preventing it from spilling over (too much) into domestic politics. Anti-communist campaigns in Central America—a region Reagan called "our southern frontier"—were especially helpful in focusing militancy outward. But Reagan's Central American wars (which comprised support for the Contras in Nicaragua and death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) generated millions of refugees, many, perhaps most, of whom fled to the United States. As they came over the border, they inflamed the same constituencies that Reagan had mobilized to wage the wars that had turned them into refugees in the first place.”

RacismImmigrationCold WarRefugeesCentral AmericaReagan
Book:The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
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“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." 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!".”

WarHistoryIndiaPakistanRefugeesBloodshedDisplacementPartition1947
Book:Two
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“…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?”

EuropeRefugeeRefugeesLifeboatsAlexander Mccall SmithLifeboat
Book:The Novel Habits of Happiness
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