People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead.
ARUNDHATI ROYNationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
More Arundhati Roy Quotes
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Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.
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Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
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He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.
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Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
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I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.
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Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries.
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The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
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Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
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Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t.
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Many people have accused me of having a romantic view, whereas I personally I feel sorry for those who have lost romance in their lives.
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I’m not ambitious. I don’t want to get anywhere, I don’t want anything more. I sometimes think that for me that is the real freedom, that I don’t want anything. I don’t want money or prizes. I want people to know that a war is going to be fought.
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Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum – all we are supposed to expect – but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.
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Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.
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Excitement always leads to tears.
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