161 Quotes About Refugees

Once upon a time, displaced people had a time and a place. They had a place in which they made plans about what to do with their future and their lives. Their time and place were prematurely destroyed and stolen from them. These people were then forced to exist in times and places that are not theirs. They were forced to learn the art of living and flourishing in the same empire that stole and destroyed their time and place back home.

A refugee is someone who was forcefully taken out of their time and place. They were then placed in another time and another place that insist on dehumanizing them. It is a tragedy. The ultimate paradox and irony of this tragedy is that, in many cases, those who caused their displacement and those who hate them in their newfound ‘homes’ in exile are the same people! In this way, they leave no place for a refugee to feel at home or even alive.

Openly supporting refugees today is like coming out as gay in the 1980s - kindness is in short supply.

No one can stay in a brutal, bloodstained place.

Acts of brutality committed by the ruling elite and systematic oppression of the weak stain every era of civilization. Ethnic wars and religious cleansing still exist in the twenty-first century. Just as insidious as state sponsored murder is the escalating economic expansion that destroys the habitat and displaces indigenous tribes’ way of life under the false moniker of economic and social progress.

Enough rationalization. They simply had what you wanted, so you took it.[My chair-- I shit on my good chair!]You shit more than just your chair.You shit the world. All you ever cared about was winning -- And you did.The last man standing on a mountain of filth [. . .]Kazumi taught forgiveness. She accepted all refugees looking for a better life. And you turned that against her.Kazumi would show mercy.I'm not Kazumi.

The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed so familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.

The choice is not between the current crisis and blissful isolation. The choice is between the current crisis and an orderly, managed system of mass migration. You can have one or the other. There is no easy middle ground

We are not meant to be in this country. We did not want to come. We were forced to flee or die. Americans perceive desperate brown masses swarming at their golden shores, wildly inventing claims of persecution for the opportunity to flourish in this prosperous land. The view from beneath the bridge is somewhat different: reluctant refugees with an aching love of their forsaken homeland, of a homeland that has forsaken them, refugees who desire nothing more than to be home again.