Statelessness Quotes

There is no such thing as a Palestinian.

The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.

How can a human being be illegal?

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

Stateless people are hidden. During the 2011 refugee crises, it was obvious that people were fleeing Somalia and Libya - there was a lot of international attention. Statelessness goes undetected because stateless people are in legal limbo and are afraid to show up.

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.

The banishment [of Russian Jews], whether by direct decree or by not less certain indirect methods, of so large a number of men and women is not a local question. A decree to leave one's country is in the nature of things an order to enter another—some other.

You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.

A Volk [people] without a state is nothing, a lifelong frivolous phantom like the vagabond gypsies and Jews.

In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.

I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person

The global movement of displaced people, many of whom end up in detention without hope, is one of the most pressing issues of our times.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

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.

I've identified all my life with refugees.

When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.

And there are new kinds of nomads, not people who are at home everywhere, but who are at home nowhere. I was one of them

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.

I'm Jewish. That's all. So I am in exile all the time. Wherever we go, we are in exile. Even in Israel, we are in exile.

The governments of south Sudan must make sure that everybody will get a nationality - that nobody will become stateless because of this separation.

I have no interest in Israeli citizenship... Israel does not want me, nor do I want Israel.

For Americans I'll always be Israeli, and for Israelis I'll always be American. But I really have no need for definitions.

Escape outside the state, as well as refusal to return to the Fatherland by a person who has been sent to serve or has been permitted temporarily to go outside the state is an act of treason, a crime punishable by a minimum sentence of ten years or even death

I might live in Manhattan or Edinburgh or Cardiff. I think of myself as without nationality.

I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.