50 Refugee Quotes That Inspire Hope for Humanity

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published July 16, 2023

You will feel your heart widen as you read these profound and inspiring refugee quotes.

Refugees are individuals who have left their countries due to political or social unrest.

Refugees often have no choice but to leave their country to escape persecution and seek protection and safety from a bordering country.

Refugees differ from migrants, as migrants move to another country due to their choice.

Significant Challenges Faced by Refugees

Below are the fundamental challenges that almost every refugee faces when forced to live outside their homeland:

Discrimination
Lack of Education
Social Integration
Limited Basic Necessities

Limited Basic Necessities

Refugees’ most prominent challenge is the limited provision of necessities like food, drinking water, and healthcare.

In most cases, refugees are forced to live in overcrowded places.

Their camps have limited resources, and the hygienic conditions are also inadequate.

Some of the threatening health risks include:

Malnutrition
Disease outbreaks
Lack of healthcare facilities

Language and cultural barriers also made things worse.

This makes it difficult for the refugees to communicate with the country’s inhabitants where they have taken refuge.

Refugees further feel marginalized due to behaviors like xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination.

Hence, it seems much more difficult for the refugees to access employment, healthcare, and housing.

These challenges have contributed to the social isolation of the refugees.

Lack of Education

Refugees don’t have complete access to education.

The limited opportunities pose a threat to the future of such refugees.

Refugee youth struggle to learn new skills and compete with their peers.

The lack of education and disrupted schooling lowers their social and intellectual development.

This makes it difficult for them to live a prosperous life.

In addition, adult refugees also face issues while seeking employment.

Top 10 Refugee Quotes

This is a compilation of the top 10 refugee quotes from well-known people.

1. “I come from a refugee family.” — Ralf Rangnick

2. “We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.” — Ariel Dorfman

3. “I’m going to build a refugee home together with friends.” — Til Schweiger

4. “I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.” — Angelina Jolie

5. “Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.” — Elie Wiesel

6. “We should involve the whole world in the handling of this refugee crisis.” — Viktor Orban

7. “My great-grandfather came here as a refugee from the pogrom in Ukraine.” — J. B. Pritzker

8. “Refugee policy is only one part of immigration law needing a drastic overhaul.” — Tom Tancredo

9. “I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.” — Stephen Miller

10. “There are a lot of us that want to see limitations on refugee resettlement programs.” — Jeff Duncan

Refugee Quotes about Refugees

Get acquainted with the thoughts and perspectives of those who have advocated for the welfare and rights of refugees in this collection of refugee quotes.

11. “It has never been illegal to be a refugee.” — Diane Guerrero

12. “The way a government treats refugees is very instructive.” — Tony Benn

13. “Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.” — Pope Francis

14. “No one wants their child to become a refugee. It’s an awful experience.” — Nguyen Viet Thang

15. “I urge you to celebrate the extraordinary courage and contributions of refugees past and present.” — Kofi Annan

16. “I know what it’s like when you are a refugee, living on the mercy of others and having to adjust.” — Martti Ahtisaari

17. “A lasting solution, the possibility to begin a new life, is the only dignified solution for the refugee himself.” — Poul Hartling

18. “Banning refugees from fleeing West Africa is like shuttering up the windows while a house burns down.” — Sarah Hanson-Young

19. “If we cannot end the conflict, we have an inescapable moral duty to help refugees and provide legal avenues to safety.” — Angelina Jolie

20. “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

Refugee Quotes from Refugees

Through these quotes, get a look into the lives, hardships, dreams, and goals of those who have experienced being refugees.

21. “As a teenager, I became a boat person – a refugee – as I made my way to Palestine.” — Frank Lowy

22. “My experience as a refugee had made me strong; I could survive anything, even the world of fashion.” — Alek Wek

23. “I was a political refugee living in Venezuela. I had a job that was twelve hours a day and no money.” — Isabel Allende

24. “When I was younger, I was completely without money – when I was studying in Budapest when I was a refugee.” — Gyorgy Ligeti

25. “I had jobs from the age of 14 when I arrived in London as a refugee. Aged 17, I’d get up at 4 a.m. to work as a cleaner before school.” — Alek Wek

26. “From age six to 12, I lived in seven different countries, moving from one refugee camp to another, hoping we would be wanted.” — Clemantine Wamariya

27. “I grew up in a refugee camp. Thirty years. This so-called human-rights world didn’t ask me what was happening for me to be there 30 years.” — Paul Kagame

28. “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.” — Chamath Palihapitiya

29. “As a former refugee myself, I am very grateful for the help my family received and the opportunities this opened up for me and where it has brought me.” — Alphonso Davies

30. “I am a refugee: my parents fled Chile under Pinochet in 1976 when I was nine months old, and my parents were able to start from nothing and make lives for themselves in the United States.” — Pedro Pascal

Refugee Quotes about Refugee Camps

These quotes look into the realities of living in refugee camps, temporary shelters for those who have fled their countries for safety and protection.

32. “People have been born in refugee camps, and they are getting tired of that.” — Javier Bardem

32. “The hardship of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong.” — Philip Emeagwali

33. “As a child growing up in refugee camps, life taught me that many things were impossible.” — Clemantine Wamariya

34. “Another thing I hate about light is it reminds me about being in a refugee camp and being outside.” — Clemantine Wamariya

35. “People living in refugee camps currently do not have access to the healthcare that they need during a pandemic.” — Vick Hope

36. “If anyone in the E.U. thinks Italy should keep being a landing point and refugee camp, they have misunderstood.” — Matteo Salvini

37. “The particular refugee camp we were in, they were hungry for play, they were hungry for any kind of normalcy.” — Connie Sellecca

38. “The lack of livelihood opportunities in refugee camps pushes many people to embark on dangerous journeys in the quest for a better life.” — Arancha Gonzalez

39. “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.” — Alek Wek

40. “If I’m doing a story on how a single mother copes in a refugee camp, I’ll go to her tent; I’ll follow her when she’s working, see what her daily life is like, and try to pack that into one composition, with nice light, in one frame.” — Lynsey Addario

Palestinian & Syrian Refugee Quotes

Here are inspiring quotes from Palestinian and Syrian refugees, sharing their stories of strength and hope.

41. “A rapidly expanding Syrian refugee policy could create conditions for domestic tragedy.” — Jeff Fortenberry

42. “I will not support any peace deal that will allow the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel.” — Avigdor Lieberman

43. “We need to hit pause, and possibly reset, as we think about this whole Syrian refugee resettlement issue.” — Jeff Duncan

44. “Under a decades-old agreement, Palestinian refugee camps are supposed to administer and police themselves.” — Richard Engel

45. “Since when can somebody tell me a time or a case where there has been a Syrian refugee in this country who has committed an act of terror?” — Linda Sarsour

46. “We know that ISIS desires operationally to use the Syrian refugee program to infiltrate countries, to use migrant flows as a way to gain an operational foothold in other countries.” — Stephen Miller

47. “The deplorable Syrian refugee crisis was created because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad started a war on his people, and the international community refused to confront him.” — Richard Grenell

48. “Jordan is the only Arab state that has provided citizenship to Palestinian refugees and integrated them. But something has to be done about the Palestinians living in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon.” — Walter Russell Mead

49. “Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judea, and Somalia.” — Yitzhak Shamir

50. “Doesn’t the world see the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have been living in exile around the world or in refugee camps for the past 60 years? No state, no home, no identity, no right to work. Doesn’t the world see this injustice?” — Ismail Haniyeh