Chris Cleave Quotes

I was the child of refugees.

Refugee today means somebody who has no home. No homeland. No security. No government to protect him or her. And it is of course one feels not only uprooted, one feels useless. One feels always surrounded by hostile forces. Arousing suspicion.

Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.

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

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.

When I was a girl, civil war in Sudan forced me to flee my home town of Wau.

I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away.

My parents left Germany in a very, very precarious way.

The idea of feeling displaced, and never feeling safe anywhere in the world, where you always feel like you're safer if you're over there, is not just my experience. If you went to Iran today or an Iranian came to America today, or the fact that there are bombs exploding everywhere, there's just a tremendous sense of fear and feeling a desire for security.

Almost every continent in the world, including our own, has refugees. But how often when we hear the word do we pause to remind ourselves what being a refugee means?

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

In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.

Since the 1960s, exile for Haitians is a condition that ends only to begin again.

If anyone has to leave their homeland by boat, they all have difficult stories. But my parents had a difficult journey, and their story always seems like a movie to me.

When I was in Switzerland, I still had the fantasy I could have saved my parents and family if I'd stayed in Germany. All nonsense. If they had not made the sacrifice to send their only child to Switzerland, I wouldn't be alive.

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and moved to the United States in 1956. It was during the Hungarian Revolution when Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, and my family - me, my brother, and my parents - escaped over the border to Austria. We just took whatever we could carry. It was perilous, but we made it across.

My own father was a refugee from the Spanish civil war in the 1930s, later going on to become a BBC radio producer after World War II.

We sure didn't feel like refugees, but in hindsight, I guess we were - my father and mother left everything behind to come here - to be safe and give their boys a chance to rebuild a life.

Educate yourself, learn about what refugees face when they don't have homes, after they have lost everything.

I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty

I have witnessed firsthand the anguish of this humanitarian tragedy - in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and other conflict and post-conflict zones. The destruction of lives and hopes, the emotional trauma, and the economic, social, and political marginalization of the displaced, the human insecurity, with real and potentially devastating consequences over generations, in ever-widening arenas of conflict. We can and must ensure the human rights of the displaced. That begins by making their voices heard.

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.

Nothing is so dangerous for our security as large groups of desperate people.

We cannot forget that we are a nation founded by refugees who were fleeing oppression and often fearful for their lives.