Arundhati Roy Quotes

My Writing Is Translated Into Every Indian Language, It's Distributed In Pamphlets, In Little Private Video Things, It's Everywhere. So It's A Lovely Pastime For The Middle Class To Think Of Itself As The Whole Nation.

Dams Are The Temples Of Secular India And Almost Worshipped. They Are Huge, Wet Cement Flags That Wave In Our Minds. They're The Symbol Of Nationalism To Many.

I Can't Be A Part Of The Large Convoy Because It's Not A Choice That You Can Make. The Fact That I'm An Educated Person Means That I Can't Be On That Convoy. I Don't Want To Be On It. I Don't Want To Be A Victim. I Don't Want To Disappear Into The Darkness.

In India, 100 Of The Richest People Own Assets Worth 25% Of The Gross Domestic Product. There's Something Terribly Wrong. No Individual And No Corporation Should Be Allowed To Amass That Kind Of Unlimited Wealth, Including Bestselling Writers Like Myself, Who Are Showered With Royalties.

He Walked On Water. Perhaps. But Could He Have *swum* On Land? In Matching Knickers And Dark Glasses? With His Fountain In A Love-in-tokyo? In Pointy Shoes And A Puff? Would He Have Had The Imagination?

We Often Confuse Or Loosely Use The Ideas Of Crony Capitalism Or Neoliberalism To Actually Avoid Using The Word "capitalism", But Once You've Actually Seen, Let's Say, What's Happening In India And The United States - That This Model Of Us Economics Packaged In A Carton That Says "democracy" Is Being Forced On Countries All Over The World, Militarily If Necessary, Has In The United States Itself Resulted In 400 Of The Richest People Owning Wealth Equivalent [to That] Of Half Of The Population.

The Fact Is That America's Weapons Systems Have Made It Impossible For Anybody To Confront It Militarily. So, All You Have Is Your Wits And Your Cunning, And Your Ability To Fight In The Way The Iraqis Are Fighting.

I Hope That That The People In The Occupy Movement Are Politically Aware Enough To Know That Their Being Excluded From The Obscene Amassing Of Wealth Of Us Corporations Is Part Of The Same System Of The Exclusion And War That Is Being Waged By These Corporations In Places Like India, Africa And The Middle East.

Our Tragedy Today Is Not Just That Millions Of People Who Called Themselves Communist Or Socialist Were Physically Liquidated In Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Not Just That China And Russia, After All That Revolution, Have Become Capitalist Economies, Not Just That The Working Class Has Been Ruined In The United States And Its Unions Dismantled, Not Just That Greece Has Been Brought To Its Knees, Or That Cuba Will Soon Be Assimilated Into The Free Market - It Is Also That The Language Of The Left, The Discourse Of The Left, Has Been Marginalised And Is Sought To Be Eradicated.

Stable Markets, Unstable World. Efficiency. Everybody Hears About It. It's Enough To Make You Want To Be Pro-inefficiency And Pro-corruption.

If You Look At The History Of The Ford Foundation And Rockefeller, In Latin America, In Indonesia, Where Almost A Million People, Mainly Communists, Were Killed By General Suharto, Who Was Backed By The Cia, In South Africa, In The Us Civil Rights Movement - Or Even Now, It's Very Disturbing. They Have Always Worked Closely With The Us State Department.

We're Told, Often Enough, That As A Species We Are Poised On The Edge Of The Abyss. It's Possible That Our Puffed-up, Prideful Intelligence Has Outstripped Our Instinct For Survival And The Road Back To Safety Has Already Been Washed Away. In Which Case There's Nothing Much To Be Done. If There Is Something To Be Done, Then One Thing Is For Sure: Those Who Created The Problem Will Not Be The Ones Who Come Up With A Solution.