Refugee Experience Quotes

I remember when we were in Egypt as refugees. It was tough, but there was always hope - hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

I never take for granted how lucky I am to be an American and what a privilege it is to spend each day at a nonprofit dedicated to helping the next generation of girls achieve their dreams. My journey, as the daughter of refugees, shows what refugees and the children of refugees can create for all Americans.

I am a refugee: my parents fled Chile under Pinochet in 1976 when I was 9 months old, and my parents were able to start from nothing and make lives for themselves in the United States.

My experience as a refugee had made me strong; I could survive anything, even the world of fashion.

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

My Aunt Erna was smuggled out of Nazi Germany in 1939, alive, in a coffin with a spider plant at her feet. When I moved to Los Angeles from New York City in 1974 for 'Happy Days,' I took a cutting with me.

My father was born in Amsterdam in a highly religious family. He was in Amsterdam, and he went into hiding right near where Anne Frank was. He was a theoretical physicist and the last Jew to get a Ph.D. in Amsterdam.

My dad grew up in Nicaragua in his teenage years, then immigrated to the United States.

Growing up with my mother who grew up during World War II being half Filipina, half Okinawan, and literally running around the jungles in the Philippines escaping Japanese military chasing after them - I grew up with what they deem now as trauma, generational trauma.

My mum said: 'Germany is our second home' and it's true. Germany gave us their open hands. I don't know which country could have done that, at that time, to welcome refugees from Bosnia.

I am one of the lucky North Koreans who made it out of China. North Korean defectors in the country are terrified of trying to leave because they are often caught at the borders as they attempt to cross into Mongolia or Laos.

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.

I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.

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. I did my best to pay that country back, and I think I did that.

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.

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.

Going back to South Sudan after the independence took place was deeply emotional for me because I had gone through the civil war with my family just before going to seek refuge in London.

When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. Many of you have been there, and many have not. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.

I've never been in a place where I've walked in the street and actually feel home, where I don't feel like a refugee.

So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with.

I was born in a tiny little enclave of terrified Jewish refugees, less than half a million of them, with no clear perspective of a future - hopes, yes, but no clear perspective.

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.

When I was first lady, I worked to call attention to the plight of refugees fleeing Cambodia for Thailand, I visited Thailand and witnessed firsthand the trauma of parents and children separated by circumstance beyond their control.

I came fleeing hunger, the sword and death, attained security and prosperity and gathered together a people. No one has done as I have.

I love 'Exit West' by Mohsin Hamid. It's a magical realism retelling of the refugee experience, where people find these magical doors that transport them to another country.