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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.

Arundhati Roy

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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Dangerous Time Worst
Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Coporation Democracy Freedom Institution Return
Anything’s possible in Human Nature …Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Hope Human Joy Love Mad Nature Possible
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
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
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Demand Enough Expectation Fundamental Human Justice Right
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
Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Beautiful Change Deep Destruction Inspirational
Things can change in a day.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Change One Liner
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Career Fight Grow Up Job Life Myself Tradition Woman
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
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Fear Hairs Hands Himself Love Relationship Rose
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
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
The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Money Politics Reaction Reality Reason Resistance Scare

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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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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Popular Authors

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