Top 323 Refugee Quotes & Sayings

My great-grandfather came here as a refugee from the pogrom in Ukraine.

Waiting is a huge part of being a refugee. You're waiting at borders to get across. You're waiting for transportation. The waiting that people do in Turkey to get aboard one of these boats is incredible. And then when they finally do get aboard, it's the last place they want to be. It's harrowing. That is the horrible irony of a refugee's life. You wait and wait for the next step, and when you get to the next step, it's awful. You don't want to be doing it. But you have to. You have to keep moving forward.

In 1995, the Clinton Administration reached an agreement with Cuban government that any refugee caught at sea would be sent back to Cuba while any refugee who reaches the United States shores would be allowed to begin the process to citizenship after one year.

We can't turn Italy into a refugee camp.

Because I became a refugee in Macau during 1941, we had this war in Hong Kong, I fought for the government as an air raid warden for 15 days. Our government surrendered, Hong Kong Government surrendered, so I took a junk and came to Macau in 16 hours and I was a refugee, so that's why I was so much indebted to Macau.

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.

In 2013 we had never faced a crisis like the Syrian refugee crisis now. Up until that point, a refugee meant someone fleeing oppression, fleeing Communism like it is in my community.

There's evidence that one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe posing as a refugee.

The refugee crisis shows we can't be isolated from the world's geopolitical troubles.

We should involve the whole world in the handling of this refugee crisis.

I've seen mothers and children really being vulnerable in the refugee camps; it's supposed to be temporary, but they end up having children who have grown up in refugee camps.

I think all of Europe has been too soft on the refugee crisis.

My father was from East Bengal. Having lost everything to the Partition, he came as a refugee.

I know what it's like when you are a refugee, living on the mercy of others and having to adjust.

I am critical of the fact that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is pulling out of everything - the joint approach to the refugee issue, for example. He cannot disparage his colleagues in the EU either - that's not how we treat each other. We require solidarity: in refugee policies, just as in the financial architecture of the structural funds from which countries like Hungary have strongly profited from for years.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

My favorite charity is the Womens Refugee Commission and the Nomi network.

Refugee policy is only one part of immigration law needing a drastic overhaul.

President Trump talks about extreme vetting, and we actually do have extreme vetting when it comes to refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement is the most thorough, cumbersome, multilayered vetting system we have for the admission of anyone to the country.

I arrived in this country as a refugee child with my sister and my mother.

I grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda, and I lived there for 30 years. That shapes one's character.

'The Odyssey' is a great poem to refugee-dom... Odysseus is not entirely a refugee... he's somebody who's blown off course. The entire book is an exploration of that theme... I reread it every year... That's not as surprising as it sounds, because it's a rip-roaring book.

Once a refugee, always a refugee. I can't ever remember not being all right wherever I was, but you don't give your whole allegiance to a place or want to be entirely identified with the society you're living in.

I am not a refugee. I sought refuge for many years, but the word 'refugee' does not define me. It just limits me and puts me in a box.

We need a legal and political understanding of the right of the refugee, whereby no solution for one group produces a new class of refugees - you can't solve a refugee problem by producing a new, potentially greater refugee problem.

I deserved the National Award for 'Border,' but got it for 'Refugee.'

the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.

The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin - the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn't swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.

If I was in a refugee camp somewhere on the Pakistani border, of course I'd want to come to Australia.

I love Europe, but we are still struggling with that kind of development. First of all, we don't have a smart conversation about the difference between an immigrant and a refugee. A refugee can't go back. An immigrant is someone - I chose to move to America. And I also have the option of saying hey, didn't work out, I can move back. That's a completely different story than someone who is locked in.

I don't know that I would have the courage to come over to a new country where the religion is different, the language is different, where I don't have any money. The thought of starting over like that in the way that many refugee families have to start all over again - that's an incredible thing to think about. One of the things I tell about Refugee is that unless you're Native American or a descendant of slaves, your family immigrated to this country - whether they came over on the Mayflower or whether they came over on a raft last year.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

I probably wouldn't have made it this far if I were a refugee.

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate-We are America!

My identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that's the first experience that I remember.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.

I think a lot of Americans forget that they are not originally from here, that somebody in their past was a refugee.

People have been born in refugee camps and they are getting tired of that.

Once refugee children are in the U.K., adapting to their new surroundings can be a lonely and demoralising experience.

Only in America could a refugee girl from Central Europe become secretary of state.

I started my career with 'Refugee' in Bhuj. Now, it has become a full-fledged city.

I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.

There is a real problem in terms of the refugee flow, the ability of ISIS to infiltrate those refugee flows, our inability to track them.

In Turkey, there are no 'refugee camps.' There are Turkish 'temporary protection shelters.' The Kurdis had no papers, no UNHCR refugee designations, and no passports, and therefore did not qualify for exit visas.

It has never been illegal to be a refugee.

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee

I was three years old, so I actually don't remember much of the refugee process.

We've been talking about the Syrian refugee crisis a lot, in the news in the U.K. and possibly the U.S., but it isn't the only refugee crisis that is happening at this minute. There's something like 22 million refugees in the world. There are people from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Syria, and so many other places where people are living in complete turmoil.

The hardship of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong.

My favorite charity is the Women's Refugee Commission and the Nomi network.

I'm going to build a refugee home together with friends.

I've never stopped being a refugee.

There are a lot of us that want to see limitations on refugee resettlement programs.

If a Cuban refugee is escaping, we're saying they're a political refugee, but why isn't a Haitian refugee a political refugee? They're escaping the capitalism and degradation of economic imperialism. We don't call them political refugees; we call them unfortunate people.

My parents are Vietnamese refugees; they left Vietnam after the war. They were part of the boat people, and they ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand after being on the water for three days, and I was born at that refugee camp in Thailand.

I think the refugee problem is Europe is vastly worse than we have in the United States.

A refugee is not just someone lacking in money and everything else. A refugee is vulnerable to the slightest touch: he has lost his country, his friends, his earthly belongings. He is a stranger, sick at heart. He is suspicious; he feels misunderstood. If people smile, he thinks they ridicule him; if they look serious, he thinks they don't like him. He is a full-grown tree in the dangerous process of being transplanted, with the chance of possibly not being able to take root in the new soil.

As a teenager I became a boat person - a refugee - as I made my way to Palestine.