64 Quotes About Refugee

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark

Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and damned flowing through Europe is my family. And there is no time in the future in which they might be helped. The only time we have is now.

At times it seems as if the whole world has become a refugee and the few of us, who are privileged enough to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock instead of a siren, those of us who are enveloped by a veil of safety many of us fail to appreciate, have become desensitised to the migrating numbers, to the images of the dead, shrugging them away as a collective misery that this ailing part of the world must endure.

One small boy jumps over a table, pulls his jumper and shirt up, and turns his back to us to show where shrapnel wounded him when he was three. His classmates shriek with laughter.

My children wanted me to be brave. They did not understand that I have been running from the nightmare of what happened in Laos since I left. Or that there were things waiting for me in Thailand, little boys and lost dogs, that I knew I could never return to. They did not understand that the bravery they asked of me I never had in Laos or Thailand, and I could not have it on returning to those countries.

Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day.

nicht der arm der gerechtigkeit, die gewalt nöthigte mich ein land zu räumen, in das man mich berufen, wo ich acht jahre in treuem, ehrenvollen dienste zugebracht hatte. `gib dem herrn eine hand, er ist ein flüchtling‘, sagte eine groszmutter zu ihrem enkel, als ich am 16. december die grenze überschritten hatte. und wo ward ich so genannt? in meinem geburtslande, das an dem abend desselben tages ungern mich mich wieder aufnahm, meine gefährten sogar von sich stiesz.

It's become increasingly indefensible to have no refugee admissions.

They must be treated lawfully under the refugee convention.