“NGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs.”

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries of the corporate world.

Excitement always leads to tears.

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.

Things can change in a day.

At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom, and in dignity. For everybody.

But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.

Privatization is presented as being the only alternative to an inefficient, corrupt state. In fact, it is not a choice at all… it is a mutually profitable business contract between the private company (preferably foreign) and the ruling elite of the Third World.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

States have invested themselves with the right to legitimise violence – so who gets criminalised and delegitimised? Only – or well that’s excessive – usually, the resistance.

I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.

Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.

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.

As a woman who grew up in a village in India, I’ve spent my whole life fighting tradition. There’s no way that I want to be a traditional Indian housewife.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

…Promises are more dangerous then secrets.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.

All beings tremble before danger, all fear death. When a man considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill.

To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.

We’re different, and you’re dangerous.” That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It’s dangerous to create that kind of tension.

Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.

The internet creates chaos and a dangerous kind of piracy but makes the viewer much more active and gives the voice to minority players.