55 Refugee Quotes
Following is our list of the most famous refugee quotations and slogans. We've compiled this selection of inspirational refugee quotes. Hopefully, these refugee quotes will keep you motivated not only during hard times but to expand your refugee knowledge!
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Short Refugee Quotes
- The way a government treats refugees is very instructive. — Tony Benn
- Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees. — Elie Wiesel
- So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge. — Chris Cleave
- I grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda, and I lived there for 30 years. That shapes one's character. — Paul Kagame
- I urge you to celebrate the extraordinary courage and contributions of refugees past and present. — Kofi Annan
- Revolt, for you have nothing to lose but your chains and your [refugee] tents! — George Habash
- Refugees have done more for my heart and my spirit than I can ever express in words. — Angelina Jolie
- Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity — Pope Francis
- If the refugees return to Israel - Israel will cease to exist. — Gamal Abdel Nasser
- Displaced societies are of value. Their issues are our issues. — Cynthia Basinet
People Writing About Refugee
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Tony Benn |
138 | 971 |
 Elie Wiesel |
553 | 4099 |
 Chris Cleave |
95 | 173 |
 Paul Kagame |
50 | 1485 |
 Kofi Annan |
301 | 3612 |
 Angelina Jolie |
364 | 2030 |
More Refugee Quotes
We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism. — Rigoberta Menchu
Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity. They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more — Pope Francis
The mind is everything. If you don’t believe you can do something then you can’t. If you believe that your upbringing was substandard and therefore you have to walk around as a refugee from that crisis situation for the rest of your life, forever bearing the burden of that experience then that will be YOUR life. — Kai Greene
In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees. — Angelina Jolie
I'm a living testament to the value of immigration. I escaped a civil war, and I came to Canada as a refugee, and they gave my family protection. I did my best to pay that country back, and I think I did that. — Chamath Palihapitiya
I came as a refugee from the Lebanese war, embraced American values, and vowed to defend them. I refuse immigrants who don't embrace our values. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
We are not only talking about waves of refugees coming to Greece, to Italy, and elsewhere. Destabilizing the Balkans means Lebanonization, and that means destabilizing all of Europe. — Fatos Nano
While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage - the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives. — Antonio Guterres
What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. — Moshe Dayan
Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army and calls it a war. — Noam Chomsky
This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees. — Nelson Mandela
Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings. — Gerald Durrell
The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world. — Mahmoud Abbas
You don’t want to end up telling somebody who’s homeless or a refugee that stress is all perceptual, because it sure isn’t in those cases. But most of us have fairly neurotic middle-class stressors. — Robert M. Sapolsky
Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war. — Loren Eiseley
We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment. — Pope Francis
Refugee problems can only be solved in the region (of origin) - maybe with a little help from the UN. Governments must provide something for their countries. They need to deliver. — Yoweri Museveni
Freedom-loving people around the world must say . . . I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism. — Ronald Reagan
While helping hundreds of thousands of refugees, Red Cross volunteers undoubtedly heard stories of Nazi brutality and rumors of mass gassings and they noted those rumors and kept an eye out for any evidence of them, but they saw nothing to indicate that the rumors were true. — David Duke
The attack on Dresden, which was overflowing with refugees, on February 13th 1945 caused around 250,000 dead. — Konrad Adenauer
Referring to Palestinian refugees: "We must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return. — David Ben-Gurion
I simply don't understand the refugee crisis. The history of humanity can be told through a story of migration and settlement. If I can't protect my family, I'm coming to where you are; I'm just coming. It's a round world, and we've all got to get on with it and move on. — Paul Bettany
Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders. — Warren Christopher
You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like. — Naomi Shihab Nye
...in the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty. — Antonio Guterres
The quota idea is a good one, but there are two problems with it. The first is clear: A quota system would also require all European countries to be prepared to take refugees. And secondly: What happens when the quota has been filled? Would we then simply tell those who are threatened, sorry but we have to send you back? — Martin Schulz
World Refugee Day is a reminder that there is no 'us' and 'them.' There is only us, one human family, connected in ways we sometimes forget. — Ann Curry
Thus, on this World Refugee Day, let us take time to recognize and draw inspiration from these ordinary people who have shown such extraordinary courage - the world's millions of refugees and displaced. — Antonio Guterres
A lasting solution, the possibility to begin a new life, is the only dignified solution for the refugee himself. — Poul Hartling
[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat. — Yitzhak Rabin
I'm constantly amazed when I talk with people in the international stage and I refer to immigrants or refugees as new Canadians. We don't even think about that. It's just what you are: you're new Canadians. — Justin Trudeau
Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge. — Elie Wiesel
I think that these flows of refugee are the inevitable counterparts to the flow of capital and goods. In other words, they too are by-products of globalisation. — Kofi Annan
When food becomes scarce, refugees often turn to desperate measures to feed themselves and their families. We are particularly worried about the health of the refugee population, domestic violence and refugees resorting to illegal employment or even to prostitution, just to put enough food on the table. — Antonio Guterres
The dream of Europe is a region of freedom and peace, of security, law, democracy, tolerance and mutual respect. If you look into the faces of the refugees you will see this dream. These are people who are fleeing from war, hate, violence and unjust systems. — Martin Schulz
Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions. — Pope Francis
In Conclusion
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