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Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They’re usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there’s the business of war.

Arundhati Roy

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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Feeling Lonely Myself
The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Important One Liner Worth
The world’s ‘freeest’ country has the highest number in prison.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Country Freedom Prison World
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Destruction Government Kind Need Politics Resistance World
You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Beginning Horror Risk Tranquility Work
Money need not be our only reward.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Money Need One Liner Ourselves Reward
Every people, every society, needs a culture of resistance, a culture of being difficult and disobedient, that is the only way they will ever be able to stand up to the inevitable abuse of power by whoever runs the state apparatus, the capitalists, the communists, the socialists, the Gandhians, whoever.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Culture Difficult Injustice Need People Power Resistance Society
The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Innocent Politics Quiet Responsibility See Trouble Yourself
Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Destroy Destruction Weapon
Use your art to fight.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Art Fight One Liner
The idea of justice – even just dreaming of justice – is revolutionary. The language of human rights tends to accept a status quo that is intrinsically unjust – and then tries to make it more accountable.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Dreams Human Ideas Justice Language Responsibilty Revolution Right
Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Literature Opposite Weapon
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 ROY

Death Kill Lose Mindset People War Willing Win
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Change Destroy History Love Past
That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Care Love People Word
To annihilate indigenous populations eventually paves the way to our own annihilation. They are the only people who practice sustainable living. We think they are relics of the past, but they may be the gatekeepers to our future.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Future Live Ourselves Past People Practice Thinking
There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Deep Force Ignorance Silence Voice
The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Beyond Life Way World
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Heart Lose Politics Remember Struggle Violence Vision Woman
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Breathe Herself Journey Myself Possible Quiet World
I am a woman who is a granddaughter of a lady who used to be beaten on the head by her husband, of a mother who went through hell because she was divorced and had to bring up these kids. And I can take 10 men out to lunch and pay the bill, and nobody even thinks twice about it. So don’t mess with me.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Divorce Hell Husband Injustice Mess Mom Myself Oppression Pay Price Violence Woman
Whatever else their faults may be, they were not radical Islamist states – Iraq was not, Syria is not, Libya was not. The most radical fundamentalist Islamist state is, of course, your America’s Saudi Arabia.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Difference Fundamental Mistake Politics Terrorism
It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Impossible Inspirational Thinking Time
Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Human Integrity Project Right
Is globalization about ‘the eradication of world poverty,’ or is it a mutant variety of colonialism, remote controlled and digitally operated?
ARUNDHATI ROY

Control Digital Poor World
Fascism itself can only be turned away if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Angry Commitment Equality Intensity Justice
Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Creation Destroy Gratitude Help Lost Power Thinking

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They’re usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there’s the business of war.

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Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They’re usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there’s the business of war.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Arundhati Roy Quotes