“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.”

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.

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.

Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.

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.

Some things come with their own punishments.

Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.

His eyes close, and he draws a long breath. When they open again, they’re colder than ever. “And that’s where you’d be disappointed, Lou.There is no good to be found in Death.

The media is either our salvation or our death.

Inside I’m dying. Outside I’m smiling.

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memories

Honey, we all got to go sometime, reason or no reason. Dying’s as natural as living. The man who’s too afraid to die is too afraid to live.

It is life, more than death, that has no limits.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Pride dies 20 minutes after death.