The refugee disaster is a humanitarian difficulty that continues to the touch each nook of our globe. As we speak, there are tens of millions of refugees worldwide, every with their very own distinctive story of resilience, hope, and survival in opposition to overwhelming odds.
These people have been pressured to flee their houses attributable to battle, persecution, or pure disasters — usually embarking on harmful journeys in quest of security and a greater life. They characterize a number of the most weak populations on this planet, but their braveness and power within the face of adversity are exceptional.
Varied world leaders, artists, thinkers, humanitarians — and even refugees themselves — have shared their views on the refugee expertise, shedding mild on their hardships, resilience, and unwavering hope for a safer future.
Their phrases function a stark reminder of our shared duty to guard and help refugees.
We’ve gathered a collection of highly effective quotes about refugees on this assortment. These quotes underscore the significance of compassion, empathy, and understanding in addressing the worldwide refugee disaster. They remind us of the shared humanity that connects us all and the significance of standing in solidarity with these in want.
Whether or not you’re trying to rejoice World Refugee Day this yr — or are merely a humanitarian, advocate, or somebody who cares deeply about world justice and human rights — these quotes will present a profound perspective on the refugee expertise.
Learn on to achieve a deeper understanding of the lives, struggles, and hopes of refugees around the globe:
The Finest Quotes By Refugees and About Refugees
Well-known Quotes
“Nobody leaves residence until house is the mouth of a shark.”
— Warsan Shire
“Give me your drained, your poor,
Your huddled lots craving to breathe free…”
— Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
“It’s the obligation of each particular person born in a safer room to open the door when somebody at risk knocks.”
— Dina Nayeri
“Both you lose hope fully and also you shatter and break into items, otherwise you turn out to be so resilient that nobody can break you anymore.”
— Malala Yousafzai, We Are Displaced: My Journey and Tales from Refugee Women Across the World
“Nobody chooses to be a refugee. All of us need to have a house and to be protected.”
— Hangama Amiri, in a tweet
“In search of security is a proper and it must be upheld for each particular person. Defending folks pressured to flee is a collective world duty. We’ve to recollect this might occur to anybody, wherever.”
— Ben Stiller
“The bosom of America is open to obtain not solely the opulent and respectable stranger, however the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”
— George Washington
“We’ve a authorized and ethical obligation to guard folks fleeing bombs, bullets and tyrants, and all through historical past these folks have enriched our society.”
— Juliet Stevenson
“Refugees don’t make our nation much less protected. However xenophobia, concern and hate do.”
— Ted Lieu
“I’ve talked about these women’ tales not in a technique to present them as victims, as people who find themselves struggling proper now, but additionally they’re brave, they’re courageous. They’re overcoming these difficulties. So now we have rather a lot to study from these younger women.”
— Malala Yousafzai, in an interview
“Refugees are moms, fathers, sisters, brothers, youngsters, with the identical hopes and ambitions as us — besides {that a} accident has certain their lives to a worldwide refugee disaster on an unprecedented scale.”
— Khaled Hosseini
“It takes tenacity, creativity and bravado to get your self and your loved ones to a brand new nation to start your life over once more. In my view, nations needs to be competing for refugees. However on the very least, everybody ought to have a protected place to name residence and a protected technique to get there.”
— Becca Heller, in a TED Speak
“Refugees aren’t terrorists. They’re usually the primary victims of terrorism.”
— António Guterres
“America needs to be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and spiritual liberty.”
— Thomas Paine
“Refugees didn’t simply escape a spot. They needed to escape a thousand reminiscences till they’d put sufficient time and distance between them and their distress to wake to a greater day.”
— Nadia Hashimi
Quotes By Refugees
“Being a refugee shouldn’t be a selection. Nobody chooses to be a refugee. It’s imposed by completely different tyranny governments and persons are escaping their very own governments.”
— Ali Saeed
“We needed to rebuild our lives, that was all… We misplaced our residence, which suggests the familiarity of each day life. We misplaced our occupation, which suggests the arrogance that we’re of some use on this world. We misplaced our language, which suggests the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of emotions.”
— Hannah Arendt, in an essay
“In a manner, the identical is true of the immigrants. They’ve contributed of their technique to the flowering of the group, and their particular person striving and struggling have remained unknown. Unemployment shouldn’t be decreased by proscribing immigration. For unemployment depends upon defective distribution of labor amongst these able to work. Immigration will increase consumption as a lot because it does demand on labor. Immigration strengthens not solely the inner economic system of a sparsely populated nation, but additionally its defensive energy.”
— Albert Einstein, in a speech on the World’s Honest in New York, 1939
“I don’t help terrorism and by no means have. As a Sri Lankan that fled battle and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee.”
— M.I.A.
“I selected America as my residence as a result of I worth freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.”
— George Soros
“There’s a important ethical distinction between an individual who commits a violent crime and an individual who tries to cross a border illegally with a view to put meals on the household desk. Such migrants could violate our legal guidelines in opposition to illicit entry, but when that’s all they do they’re trespassers, not criminals. They need to have their dignity revered.”
— Madeleine Albright
“It’s my job to assist folks. That’s how we will maintain being good and switch like to our children and our grandkids. If somebody helps me, I don’t need to be the final one who has been helped.”
— Yassin Terou, in an interview
“When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, nationwide borders and sensitivities turn out to be irrelevant. Wherever males or girls are persecuted due to their race, faith, or political opinions, that place should — at that second — turn out to be the middle of the universe.”
— Elie Wiesel
“We’re not going to surrender who we’re or our final title as a result of that’s what this nation has been constructed on. It’s a tapestry of various backgrounds, cultures, religions, and that’s the power to me of what the USA is and what it stands for, freedom above all else.”
— Gloria Estefan, in an interview for USA As we speak
“There are tens of millions of individuals, refugees, who’ve skilled the identical conflicts and struggles I did. They’ve the identical potential to defy the chances and obtain nice issues.”
— Clemantine Wamariya
“There’s the character of being a refugee. We’re all outlined by our households however by our environments. Issues we take with no consideration. What occurs when all of that’s gone when your loved ones is gone? the nation you had been born in doesn’t even exist anymore. You’re barely in a position to verbally talk. You’re stripped all the way down to the naked bone of who you’re as an individual. Your ego is totally irrelevant, doesn’t even exist. And also you merely are. Apparently, it was precisely this which turned the muse of my inventive work in a while. This consciousness of the fundamental human situation and the common expression of it, which actually when stripped of the socioeconomic artifice which we’re developed in, in its revealing frank kind that resonates with us all.”
— Zak Ozmo, in a TED discuss
“I spotted that by sharing my story, I used to be not directly dispelling stereotypes and altering detrimental attitudes. I got down to create a platform for youth empowerment by means of storytelling.”
— Ahmed Badr, founding father of Narratio
On Ukrainian Refugees
“Tens of millions of individuals have been displaced both inside Ukraine or pressured to reside as refugees, and assuaging the influence on them is considered one of our important priorities.”
— Odile Renaud-Basso, President of The European Financial institution for Reconstruction and Improvement
“Our ethical obligation is to assist Ukrainian refugees by all means potential.”
— Gitanas Nausėda, President of Lithuania
“Folks of the world… Such as you, I’m distraught watching Ukraine underneath assault. We should come collectively as a power for good!”
— Chef José Andrés, World Central Kitchen
“We see that the worldwide Crimson Cross is placing collectively shelters. We already see that Polish persons are already feeding folks as they cross the border. We’re seeing folks in Ukraine caring for folks and doing the very best they’ll underneath the circumstances.”
— Chef José Andrés, World Central Kitchen
“Let me additionally take this chance to specific my nice satisfaction and gratitude for the solidarity that the folks of my and plenty of different nations have proven by letting folks share their houses, by organizing charitable occasions, or by donating to organizations energetic in serving to refugees and displaced folks.”
— Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister of Luxembourg
“As tens of millions of Ukrainians flee their houses looking for security, we can’t be paralyzed by horror,” he mentioned. “We should reside as much as the exemplary bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian folks. We’ve to help them and those that are internet hosting them in Poland and elsewhere.”
— Werner Hoyer, President of the European Funding Financial institution
On Syrian Refugees
“Even when the battle ends and we rebuild our houses, there are numerous issues that may by no means be rebuilt. Syrians had been by no means divided — alas, now they’ll by no means be the identical.”
— Hamda, in an article
“We live on the sting of hell. We’ve been ready for therefore lengthy for the day that the world would hear our voice. I hope it’s right now.”
— Zoher
“We’ve ethical duties to the dispossessed — and needs to be taking our fair proportion of Syrian refugees, notably parentless youngsters.”
— Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis
“Syria’s neighboring nations can’t and shouldn’t carry the price of caring for refugees on their very own. The worldwide group should share the burden with them by offering financial help, investing in growth in these nations, and opening their very own borders to determined Syrian households searching for safety.”
— Khaled Hosseini
“My hunch, for what it’s value, is that almost all of us in all probability discover it a lot, a lot tougher than we notice to essentially think about what disaster is like. I’ve a hunch that all of us labor underneath this somewhat handy phantasm that if we learn in regards to the Syrian refugee disaster, we will think about what it feels prefer to set off from your house and your life with all of your possessions in two bin liners. All of us suppose that we will think about that and my guess is that none of us have gotten a clue.”
— Decca Aitkenhead
Extra Quotes
“In every single place inmigrants have enriched and strengthened the material of American life.”
— John F. Kennedy
“God doesn’t want your good works, however your neighbor does.”
— Martin Luther
“Nobody places their youngsters in a ship until the water is safer than the land.”
— Warsan Shire
“We should proceed to honor America’s dedication to holding households collectively and never flip our backs on refugees and asylum seekers.”
— Jimmy Gomez
“A refugee is somebody who survived and who can create the long run.”
— Amela Koluder
“To be known as a refugee is the alternative of an insult; it’s a badge of power, braveness, and victory.”
— Tennessee Workplace for Refugees
“I by no means take with no consideration how fortunate I’m to be an American and what a privilege it’s to spend every day at a nonprofit devoted to serving to the following technology of women obtain their goals. My journey, because the daughter of refugees, reveals what refugees and the youngsters of refugees can create for all Individuals.”
— Reshma Saujani
“Immigrants deserve empathy and gentleness as the method of leaving your house is troublesome. And but, if requested to do it over, many people would make that painful resolution once more.”
— Miguel Bermudez
“Too usually we deal with the alternatives the U.S. gives immigrants within the land of the ‘American Dream,’ and never on how our mercurial nationwide moods result in small and enormous coverage shifts that radically have an effect on actual folks.”
— Jessica Goudeau, After the Final Border: Two Households and the Story of Refuge in America
“If you come, like we do, from a rustic with a distinct tradition, discovering [in your host country] one thing that you just like, one thing that you just’re keen about, and with the ability to follow it, properly, it fills them with a way of peace and calm.”
— Juan Carlos Urquilla, in an article
“In a rustic the place possessions counted for every little thing, we had no belongings besides our tales.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees
“This nation was constructed and continues to outlive off the backs of immigrants and refugees.”
— Lauren Jauregui
“Refugees want world solidarity and the power to rebuild their lives in dignity. Given the chance, refugees make important contributions to their host communities, however they want entry to equal alternatives and to jobs, housing, and healthcare. Allow us to pledge to reaffirm the world’s collective duty in aiding and welcoming refugees.”
— UN Secretary-Normal António Guterres
“We’re all migrants by means of time.”
— Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
