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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

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
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
People who promote the free market and growth are far more romantic, and far more ideologically driven and blinded by their vision than somebody who goes in and comments about the beauty of a forest or the stars in the sky.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Freedom Growth People Romantic Sky Stars Vision
The American people ought to know that it is not them, but their government’s policies, that are so hated.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Government Hate People Politics
The revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Change Foundation Fund Imagination Money Reality Revolution Trust
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
Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Human Integrity Project Right
Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Acceptance Change
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 American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Beyond Life Way World
It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Impossible Inspirational Thinking Time
Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Difference One Liner Sick Terrorism
The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Important One Liner Worth
Even capitalists must surely admit, that intellectually at least, socialism is a worthy opponent. It imparts intelligence even to its adversaries.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Intellectual Intelligence Worth
Money need not be our only reward.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Money Need One Liner Ourselves Reward
If you’re happy in a dream, does that count?
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Count Dreams Happiness
Use your art to fight.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Art Fight One Liner
Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Bone Break Constitution Ordinary Story
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
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
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
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Investment Legal Resistence Right Violence
Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Literature Opposite Weapon
Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Country Depression Greatness Growth Key Way Weapon
Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Justice Old Peace Reality Resistance Truth
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
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Clothes Color Death Government Kind Mindset Nation Oneself People

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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