Inspiring Homeless Quotes: A Powerful Collection to Uplift and Motivate

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."

- Mother Teresa

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."

- Mother Teresa

"Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hand instead."

- Mother Teresa

"Fear is dangerous. It creates an environment in which it’s acceptable to treat those experiencing poverty and homelessness with anger and hate. The first step to stopping this is to realize that this fear is unfounded and dangerous."

- Terence Lester

"There is much suffering in the world — physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience."

- Mother Teresa

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

- Albert Einstein

"Somewhere along the way, we must learn that there is nothing greater than to do something for others."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you."

- Mother Teresa

"Helping others, serving others — this is the real meaning of life."

- Dalai Lama

"When it comes to homelessness, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Does my behavior towards those without an address contribute to the invisibility that they face daily?’ If your answer is yes, it might be time to change how you see those without an address."

- Terence Lester

"The way to feel good is to do good. Find your good — and do it."

- Jon Bon Jovi

"There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all."

- Charles Dickens

"The homeless often feel invisible, allowed to plummet through widening holes in the social safety net, then hidden in doorways from which people avert their eyes."

- Dawn Foster

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others."

- Saint Augustine

"A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of."

- Nelson Mandela

"If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you’re fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family."

- Susan Sarandon

"The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope."

- Barack Obama

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

- Albert Pike

"Home was never a dream for homeless people as they used to have their homes. Living in a home was their reality. Now we need to help them to find the lost reality — again."

- Munia Khan

"Migrant workers have helped build our roads, homes and offices. We cannot stand and watch them be homeless."

- Sonu Sood

"I just think if I can go from being a homeless kid with a dream of being in the biggest band in the world and making that happen, I can do a lot of other cool stuff, too."

- Nikki Sixx

"When you look down on someone visibly suffering because they are experiencing poverty or homelessness, it does not prove how great you are; instead, it reveals how much inner suffering you are experiencing within."

- Terence Lester

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."

- Charles Dickens

"You’ve got to put a roof over someone’s head and then you’ve got to give them the ability to provide so they can keep it over their head. You can’t just give the man a home and go, good luck. Because next month there’s a lighting bill coming."

- Jon Bon Jovi

"Always have a willing hand to help someone, you might be the only one that does."

- Roy T. Bennett

"Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable."

- Daniel Quinn

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them."

- Dalai Lama

"If you know of someone who is homeless; or by chance you are homeless yourself; you are not alone."

- Asa Don Brown

"Escaping poverty among the physical barriers is difficult, but with the added emotional toll, it’s almost impossible. It’s not as simple as we’d like to think."

- Terence Lester

"If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better."

- Will Smith

"Gentle reminder: People experiencing homelessness deserve to experience the type of love that goes to battle alongside them, not against them."

- Love Beyond Walls

"None of us are home until all of us are home."

- Project HOME

"Most people never really sat down and got to know a homeless person, but every homeless person is just a real person that was created by God and it is the same kind of different as us; they just have a different story."

- Ron Hall

"Most people never really sat down and got to know a homeless person but every homeless person is just a real person that was created by God and it is the same kind of different as us; they just have a different story."

- Ron Hall

"The worst poverty isn’t about not having enough money to survive. Real poverty is when there is no one in the world who loves you. When there is no other human to make you feel like you matter. As if you aren’t worth the air you breathe. Poverty of love is the worst thing you can be deprived of."

- Paige Dearth

"Give, but give until it hurts."

- Mother Teresa

"A homeless veteran should not have to stand at a freeway exit with a cardboard sign. That’s not okay."

- Joe Walsh

"We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction."

- Dennis Kucinich

"Reminder: Being hateful towards people going through homelessness and poverty doesn’t solve homelessness and poverty."

- Terence Lester

"If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one."

- Mother Teresa

"People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes."

- Sheila McKechnie

"Most homeless kids are on the streets because they have been forced by circumstances that cause them to think that they are safer there than in any home they once knew."

- Jewel

"When passersby ignore homeless people, they don’t know if that was a man or woman in uniform previously. They should not be invisible. They cannot be ignored."

- Max Martini

"How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?"

- Shane Claiborne

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty."

- Mother Teresa

"It’s hard being homeless at any age, but at 16 years old? I can’t even imagine. When you’re a homeless twithen, how do you build a future or have any sort of life?"

- Stacey Dooley

"Support for shelters and transitional living and housing programs is necessary if we are going to change the landscape for homeless boys and girls in America."

- Jewel

"Freedom is meaningless if people cannot put food in their stomachs, if they can have no shelter, if illiteracy and disease continue to dog them."

- Nelson Mandela

"Not everyone who’s homeless is a drug-addict or in need of mental health care. Some are normal people who’ve been knocked down, and it can happen to you too. Not all of us made bad life choices."

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

"If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn’t care for them, but because you and I didn’t give, were not an instrument of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter."

- Mother Teresa

"There’s no reason someone who has fought for their country should be homeless or jobless."

- Chris Kyle

"What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do."

- Dorothy Day

"These things become the norm: that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news. In contrast, a ten-point drop in the stock markets of some cities is a tragedy."

- Pope Francis

"More than half of homeless youth became homeless for the first time because they were asked to leave home by a parent or caregiver."

- Dr. Resa Matthew

"We can’t forget that there are so many young people who are homeless — and unbelievably vulnerable."

- Stacey Dooley

"Healthcare as a human right, it means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade-school education if they so choose it, and I think no person should be homeless if we can have public structures and public policy to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States."

- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"Homelessness is the canary in the mine. It’s the prophetic call to all of us that there’s something radically wrong in our society if anybody is living on our streets."

- Sister Mary Scullion

"'Who is going to pay for that?' is never asked when it comes to police & military budgets, yet it is the default response to policy agendas that dare to help folks experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, & mental health issues. We fund what we value, we police what we don’t."

- Ahmed Ali

"As an immigrant, I truly believed when I was coming to this country that people had the tools necessary to life to live a life that is prosperous, that is just and free. So, every single day, I am shocked with the hypocrisy of this country. That we are the wealthiest nation in the world. But we cannot figure out how to house our homeless people."

- Ilhan Omar

"The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members."

- Pearl S. Buck

"It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them."

- Dalai Lama

"Like you, I know people who drink, people who do drugs, and bosses who have tantrums and treat their subordinates like dirt. They all have good jobs. Were they to become homeless, some of them would surely also become ‘alcoholics,’ ‘addicts,’ or ‘mentally ill’."

- Elliot Liebow

"Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless."

- Chris Gardner

"Before you ignore another homeless person on the street, just remember that that could be someone’s father or someone’s mother and they have a story."

- Syesha Mercado

"To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help."

- Jan Schakowsky

"I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me."

- Shane Claiborne

"Nowhere in the bible did it say, “Only show compassion and empathy to those you can trust.” If we did that, we would be burying homeless people every day."

- Shannon L. Adler

"The biggest misconception about the homeless is that they got themselves in the mess — let them get themselves out. Many people think they are simply lazy. I urge those to make a friend at a local mission and find out how wrong these assumptions are."

- Ron Hall

"After all, a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him."

- Jack Kerouac

"You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course."

- Jello Biafra

"Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."

- Wallace Stegner

"It takes a society to combat homelessness, and a strong nation to fight poverty."

- Wayne Chirisa

"Homelessness is not a choice, but rather a journey that many find themselves in."

- Asa Don Brown

"Homeless exist because billionaires exist. In polarity, there is extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Bridge the gap between the two and you will find balance and an earth that will survive the threat of humanity’s self-imposed climate change. Earth is a reflection of humanity."

- Deborah Bravandt

"We live in a world where there is so much wealth. There shouldn’t be a homeless person. That’s crazy."

- Raheem De Vaughn

"When we bear witness when we become the situation — homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death — the right action arises by itself."

- Bernie Glassman

"One of the toughest jobs we have is convincing some people that we’re not making up this problem. The homeless out here may be harder to see, but they are all around, right beneath the surface."

- Dottie Kastigar

"Seven out of ten Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless."

- Pras Michel

"Let your love be the kindness to make a homeless person believe that a soul needs something more than just four walls and a ceiling."

- Munia Khan

"Home was never a dream for homeless people as they used to have their homes. Living in a home was their reality. Now we need to help them to find the lost reality – again."

- Munia Khan

"Treat him as a friend and save a life – A homeless man is not a leper."

- Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann

"Having an open mind means learning to add more to our already existing beliefs about affirming dignity of those who are impoverished."

- Terence Lester

"Don’t try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable."

- Daniel Quinn

"My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share, and that no one starves while I eat."

- Leo Tolstoy

"If my fans want to do something for me when that time comes, I say, don’t waste your money on me. Help the homeless. Help the needy... people who don’t have no food... Instead of some big funeral, where they come from here and there and all over. Save it."

- B. B. King

"I have often spoken about the importance of intentionality in philanthropy: that it has to stir the soul. This is true whether you are feeding the homeless, mentoring a child, or working on climate change."

- Charles Bronfman

"We have come dangerously close to accepting the homeless situation as a problem that we just can’t solve."

- Linda Lingle

"A lot of communities pretend they don’t have homeless and just ignore them or try to make them go away."

- Alexandra C. Pelosi

"Making it so you don’t have to look at homeless people isn’t a solution to homelessness."

- Sara Luterman

"People can be so apathetic. They continue to ignore the real people trapped in poverty and homelessness. It’s almost maddening"

- Daphne Zuniga

"It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy."

- Reverend David Beckmann

"If you want to eliminate hunger, everybody has to be involved."

- Bono

"Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers — we need our faith-based and community partners."

- Dirk Kempthorne

"I teach a Bible study for homeless guys in downtown Atlanta every week. Been doing it for years. That’s the guys I’d rather go talk to. I’d rather take my act outside the church."

- Jeff Foxworthy

"My parents came from little, so they made a choice to give a lot: buying turkeys for homeless shelters at Thanksgiving, delivering meals to people in hospices, giving spare change to those asking for it."

- Meghan Markle

"Altogether, if we are committed to doing this heart and mind work, we may encounter new people or ideas."

- Terence Lester

"From the comfort of our own homes it's hard to understand the complexities of something like poverty and homelessness."

- Terence Lester

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

- Mahatma Gandhi

"There are millions of homeless people in the world because humanity does not have a proper conscience!"

- Mehmet Murat Ildan

"Like you, I know people who drink, people who do drugs, and bosses who have tantrums and treat their subordinates like dirt. They all have good jobs. Were they to become homeless, some of them would surely also become ‘alcoholics,’ ‘addicts,’ or ‘mentally ill."

- Elliot Liebow

"My life was a wandering; I never had a homeland. It was a matter of being constantly tossed about, without rest; nowhere, and never did I find a home."

- Jan Amos Komensky

"Homelessness is not just about having a job or an apartment. Too often homelessness is due to a disordered mind."

- Danielle Steel

"Homelessness is not the result of not having a house, it’s a lack of a soul in a body."

- Goitsemang Mvula

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

- Anatole France

"A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, “Get a boat!”"

- Daniel Quinn

"Poverty is the mother of crime."

- Marcus Aurelius

"A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul."

- Phillip Moffitt

"To those who are struggling. To talk about a struggle, you’re likely to forget about it. To be shown a struggle, you’re likely not to forget it. But, to live through a struggle, you’ll understand it."

- Valerie Owens

"The world of the homeless is a tough and interesting world."

- Paul Dano

"A strong economy causes an increase in the demand for housing; the increased demand for housing drives real-estate prices and rentals through the roof. And then affordable housing becomes completely inaccessible."

- William Baldwin

"Public housing is more than just a place to live, public housing programs should provide opportunities to residents and their families."

- Carolyn McCarthy

"People will sooner aid a sick dog lying on the sidewalk than to try to find shelter for a sick person. It’s too much to deal with."

- Michael Zaslow

"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you."

- Drake

"When life gets hard, try to remember: the life you complain about is only a dream to some people."

- Anonymous

"Stay positive no matter what. And be patient, it won’t happen all at once."

"No matter how tough the road ahead, don’t give up on your dreams."

"Your strength lies in your ability to rise from adversity."

"You’ve gotta have gusto… that’s what makes you a fighter."

"Your current situation does not define your worth."

"Leave the shame behind and be proud, because you’re going to overcome this. I hope other women can find that inside of them."

"Stories change lives. We get to be examples, and that’s a privilege."

"Don’t tell someone to forget what hurt them, (it’s important to) share and help someone else."

"I know the enemy will always be there. I have to trust my God will always be there."

"You can do this. You have to believe in yourself."

"Become a part of it. [ The Fairweather Family Lodge] is a community, not just a home."

"We can all relate to each other, and we can empower each other."

"I need my son to understand the way the world works. Helping someone doesn’t have to cost (you anything)…(and) it’s rewarding."

"To overcome what you have gone through- you are way stronger than you ever were."