Refugee Quotes

“How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“But in our camp, his story was everyone’s story, a single tale of dispossession, of being stripped to the bones of one’s humanity, of being dumped like rubbish into refugee camps unfit for rats. Of being left without rights, home, or nation while the world turned its back to watch or cheer the jubilation of the usurpers proclaiming a new state they called Israel.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“we are the boat
returning to dock
we are the footprints
on the northern trail
we are the iron
coloring the soil
we cannot
be erased”
― Remi Kanazi, Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine

“I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“You had to try to hang on to your name, though nobody cared about your name. You had to try and stay a person. You had to try not to become invisible. If you let go and fell back into the chaos you were gone, just a number in a unit, which was also a number. If you died, no one knew. If you gave up and disintegrated inside, no one knew.”
― Clemantine Wamariya, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“When you must flee and can carry only one thing, what will it be? What single seed from your old life will be the most useful in helping you sow a new one?”
― Chantha Nguon, Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

“Mucize Mülteci
(Divine Refugee Sonnet)

Call me misafir, call me göçmen,
This heart of mine is always migrant.
Şan ve şöhrete ben muhtaç değilim,
Benim derdim dünya, dünya dermanım.

Call me gypsy, or call me refugee,
This heart of mine is always migrant.
I've got no use for silicon or gold,
World is my bane, world, my ointment.

In Sanskrit I am Abhijit,
In English I am Victor.
In Arabic I am Ghalib,
In History I am Reformer.

Call me whatever you like,
Befitting your culture.
I have no reservations,
Above my human nature.

So many tongues, as many names -
Some call agua, some call pani.
Conquer the tongue, spirit is the same -
Some dub it divine, I live as humanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn

“And whenever you look back and realize something was the last of something - like the last moment you ever saw your grandfather's house or the smell of the street you lived on or Orich bars or whatever - it can be an ordinary thing, but it also becomes the only thing you have, the clearest memory, and it gains all this extra meaning.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“I don't know how my mom was so unstoppable despite all that stuff happening. I dunno. Maybe it's anticipation. Hope. The anticipation that the God who listens in love will one day speak justice. The hope that some final fantasy will come to pass that will make everything sad untrue.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Weeping is reserved for those who stay. They weep and the earth weeps with them, the anguish drowned in a sea of shared grief. The exile cries alone, his voice sailing across eons unheeded, until, hitting the ghost of some dead galaxy, it is thrown back to haunt him.”
― Charlson Ong, Men of the East and Other Stories

“A refugee must learn to be anything people want her to be at any given moment. But behind the masks, I am only myself - a mosaic of flavors from near and far.”
― Chantha Nguon, Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

“A new approach to safe havens that is radically more supportive is urgently needed in order to address this dysfunctional imbalance, and to simultaneously meet the concerns of donors, hosts, and refugees.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“Refugees are not a homogeneous group of people. Some are attracted by the prospect of succeeding in a high-income society; others, a majority, hope to return to Syria.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“Today, due to 24/7 media, the internet, and broadcast news, we know more about suffering elsewhere than any previous generation, and yet we are turning our backs to it.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“Since the Syrian refugee situation was just one of many, the approach was completely unfeasible. Financially, the only reason it did not break down earlier was itself a devastating critique: refugees overwhelmingly bypassed the camps. Since the Syrian refugee situation was just one of many, the approach was completely unfeasible. Financially, the only reason it did not break down earlier was itself a devastating critique: refugees overwhelmingly bypassed the camps.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“The inability of refugees to earn a living within the standard UNHCR approach was not only psychologically diminishing for the refugees, but also highlighted the lack of viability of the financing model. Paying for 4 million refugees to live without work for ten years was manifestly unsustainable. Even at a cost of only $1,000 per refugee per year, which would have implied a drastic reduction in lifestyle relative to Syrian pre-refugee conditions, the bill would have amounted to $40bn.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“There is nothing more precious than a child’s smile in this world. But many children aren’t able to smile now. We must create an environment for them to thrive and smile forever.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Certainly, what was true for the refugees and exiles of Shanghai remains true for people fleeing catastrophe in contemporary times. Whether these migrants are driven from Syria, Myanmar, Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia, Guatemala, or too many other places. These refugees have all faced the agonizing choice of whether to stay, or to flee.”
― Helen Zia, Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution

“In a world fractured by turmoil, there's much to learn from the profound human experience shared by the uprooted and displaced.”
― Helen Zia, Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution

“Call me gypsy, or call me refugee,
This heart of mine is always migrant.
I've got no use for silicon or gold,
World is my bane, world, my ointment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn

“If you can't change the situation as a whole, try to change it in small ways!”
― Julia Peters, Three Little Birds Burning in the Flames of War

“There is no stranger, only neighbor. Everyone is family, no one is foreigner.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“I put down Mr. Sheep Sheep. He props up on the dirt on a flat-panel bottom. His stubby round legs poke out in front of him. His arms reach out for a hug. I look in his black button eyes. They beg.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Sometimes you just want somebody to look at a thing with you and say, "Yes. That is a thing you're looking at. You haven't lied to yourself.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“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.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“All of us inpatient for the sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home.”
― Khaled Hosseini, Sea Prayer

“Better a refugee than prisoner
(Sonnet 1555)

Eon upon eon I seek for a refuge,
Land upon land I receive but coldness.
Last I stand at your door exhausted,
Spare some warmth, for my heart freezes!

Stateless, cultless, I walk the planet.
Restless, sleepless, I live a dream.
Friendless, loveless, I brave the mission.
The being is dissolved for the beacon to beam.

Wield, I do, my conscience as compass.
Wear, I do, my backbone as battery.
Bouts of tragedy only amplifies my thunder,
Nature's bare mockery makes miracle of me.

Borders are for hoarders, my home is the world.
Better a refugee to the sea than prisoner of the pond.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Better a refugee to the sea than prisoner of the pond.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Better a refugee than prisoner.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets