That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
ARUNDHATI ROYPower 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.
More Arundhati Roy Quotes
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What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.
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When people say “the people” or “the public” as though it’s the final repository of all morality, I sometimes flinch.
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Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.
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It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened.
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The world’s ‘freeest’ country has the highest number in prison.
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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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Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Even capitalists must surely admit, that intellectually at least, socialism is a worthy opponent. It imparts intelligence even to its adversaries.
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Flags are bits of colored cloth used first to shrinkwrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
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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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