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Arundhati Roy

123 quotes

“In battle...enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can. (p273)”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Kashmir the only thing to do with nightmares was to embrace them like old friends and manage them like old enemies. (p358)”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests in 1998, even those of us who condemned them, balked at the hypocrisy of Western nuclear powers. Implicit in their denunciation of the tests was the notion that Blacks cannot be trusted with the Bomb. Now we are presented with the spectacle of our governments competing to confirm that belief.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War Talk, CounterPunch, (June 2, 2002)
“It’s not just the one million soldiers on the border who are living on hair-trigger alert. It’s all of us. That’s what nuclear bombs do. Whether they’re used or not, they violate everything that is humane. They alter the meaning of life itself. Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate these men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War Talk, CounterPunch, (June 2, 2002)
“Where there is oppression, it will always be challenged by those of us who will challenge it with greater intensity, you know? So that's why I don't believe that there can ever be peace without justice, you know? The two go together. And there cannot be peace in the world with full-spectrum dominance or, you know, nuclear warfare or any of those things. They won't help, because always there will be people who demand dignity, who demand justice, who demand their rights.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an interview with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope screened 18th October 2004 on ABC Australia
“Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arundhati Roy: They are trying to keep me destabilised. Anybody who says anything is in danger, (5 June 2011)
“Women from Kerala work throughout India and the world earning money to send back home. And yet they'll pay a dowry to get married, and they'll have the most bizarrely subservient relationships with their husbands. I grew up in a little village in Kerala. It was a nightmare for me. All I wanted to do was to escape, to get out, to never have to marry somebody there. Of course, they were not dying to marry me [laughs]. I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only thing worth globalizing is dissent, but I don't know whether to be optimistic or not. When I'm outside the cities I do feel optimistic. There is such grandeur in India and so much beauty. I don't know whether they can kill it. I want to think they can't. I don't think that there is anything as beautiful as a sari. Can you kill it? Can you corporatize a sari? Why should multinationals be allowed to come in and try to patent basmati rice? People prefer to eat roti and idlis and dosas rather than McDonald's burgers.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's so frightening, the nationalism in the air. I'm terrified by it. It can be used to do anything. I know that a world in which countries are stockpiling nuclear weapons and using them in the ways that India and Pakistan and America do to oppress others and to deceive their own people is a dangerous world.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nuclear tests were a way to shore up our flagging self-esteem. India is still flinching from a cultural insult, still looking for its identity. It's about all that.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indian intellectuals today feel radical when they condemn fundamentalism, but not many people are talking about the links between privatization, globalization, and fundamentalism. Globalization suits the Indian elite to a T. Fundamentalism doesn't.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Delhi the cars are getting bigger and sleeker, the hotels are getting posher, the gates are getting higher, and the guards are no longer the old chowkidars, the watchmen, but they are fellows with guns. And yet the poor are packed into every crevice like lice in the city. People don't see that anymore. It's as if you shine a light very brightly in one place, the darkness deepens around. They don't want to know what's happening. The people who are getting rich can't imagine that the world is not a better place.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think my eyes were knocked open and they don't close. I sometimes wish I could close them and look away. I don't always want to be doing this kind of work. I don't want to be haunted by it. Because of who I am and what place I have now in India, I'm petitioned all the time to get involved. It's exhausting and very difficult to have to say, 'Look, I'm only one person. I can't do everything.' I know that I don't want to be worn to the bone where I lose my sense of humor. But once you've seen certain things, you can't un-see them, and seeing nothing is as political an act as seeing something.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. ...”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a speech entitled Confronting Empire given at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, 28 January 2003
“The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, (sadly at the cost of leaving other horrors in other places to unfurl in the dark), but because it is a sign of things to come. Iraq marks the beginning of a new cycle. It offers us an opportunity to watch the Corporate-Military cabal that has come to be known as 'Empire' at work. In the new Iraq the gloves are off.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the battle to control the world's resources intensifies, economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback. Iraq is the logical culmination of the process of corporate globalization in which neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism have fused. If we can find it in ourselves to peep behind the curtain of blood, we would glimpse the pitiless transactions taking place backstage. But first, briefly, the stage itself.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech accepting the Sydney Peace Prize, (7 November 2004)
“Before Washington's illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International poll showed that in no European country was the support for a unilateral war higher than 11 percent. On February 15, 2003, weeks before the invasion, more than ten million people marched against the war on different continents, including North America. And yet the governments of many supposedly democratic countries still went to war. The question is: is “democracy” still democratic?”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arundhati Roy: Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire, Speech, San Francisco, California (16 August 2004)
“It's not a real choice. It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both owned by Proctor & Gamble. This doesn't mean that... the Democrats and Republicans are the same. Of course, they're not. Neither are Tide and Ivory Snow. Tide has oxy-boosting and Ivory Snow is a gentle cleanser.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before Washington's illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International poll showed that in no European country was the support for a unilateral war higher than 11 percent. On February 15, 2003, *There are differences in the I.Q.s and levels of ruthlessness between this year's U.S. presidential candidates. The anti-war movement in the United States has done a phenomenal job of exposing the lies and venality that led to the invasion of Iraq, despite the propaganda and intimidation it faced. This was a service not just to people here, but to the whole world.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arundhati Roy: Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire, Speech, San Francisco, California (16 August 2004)
“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. government... have been called “anti-American.” ..The term... is usually used by the American establishment to discredit... its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or... opposed to freedom of speech?...That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands... who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This sly conflation of America's culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America's “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is... extremely effective strategy.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don't love us, you hate us... If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. But I’ve realized...It’s actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To fuel yet another war – this time against Iraq – by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does loss mean to individuals? What does it mean to whole cultures, whole people who have learned to live with it as a constant companion?”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since it is September 11th we’re talking about, perhaps it’s in the fitness of things that we remember what that date means, not only to those who lost their loved ones in America last year, but to those in other parts of the world to whom that date has long held significance.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This historical dredging is not offered as an accusation or a provocation. But just to share the grief of history. To thin the mists a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: “Welcome to the World.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twenty-nine years ago, in Chile, on the 11th of September 1973, General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. “Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible,” said Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Laureate, then the U.S. Secretary of State.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1999, following the arrest of General Pinochet in Britain, thousands of secret documents were declassified by the U.S. government. They contain unequivocal evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the coup as well as the fact that the U.S. government had detailed information about the situation in Chile during General Pinochet’s reign.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homes like a school bully distributes marbles.)”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain’s festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1947, the U.N. formally partitioned Palestine and allotted 55 per cent of Palestine’s land to the Zionists. Within a year, they had captured 76 per cent. On the 14th of May 1948 the State of Israel was declared. Minutes after the declaration, the United States recognized Israel. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza strip came under Egyptian military control, and formally Palestine ceased to exist except in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Young Palestinians who cannot control their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel’s streets and public places, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people, injecting terror into daily life, and eventually hardening both societies’ suspicion and mutual hatred of each other. Each bombing invites merciless reprisal and even more hardship on Palestinian people. But then suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Israel’s staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the U.S. The U.S. government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every U.N. resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the United States – taxpayers money.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers. But can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they have arrived at this destination? September 11, 1922 to September 11, 2002 – eighty years is a long time to have been waging war.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1988, Saddam Hussein razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq, used chemical weapons and machine guns to kill thousands of Kurdish people... that same year the U.S. government provided him with $500 million in subsidies... The next year, after... his genocidal campaign, the U.S. government doubled its subsidy to $1 billion... provided him with high quality germ seed for anthrax...helicopters and dual-use material... to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So what changed? In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he had acted independently, without orders from his master.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The U.S., which George Bush has called “the most peaceful nation on earth”, has been at war with one country or another every year for the last fifty [years].”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wars are...usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there’s the business of war...”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Protecting its control of the world’s oil is fundamental to U.S. foreign policy.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the last ten years of unbridled Corporate Globalization...the numbers of poor in the world has increased by 100 million.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The American Way of Life” is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared... America’s corporate heart is hemorrhaging.”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source