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. Arundhati Roy More Quotes by Arundhati Roy More Quotes From Arundhati Roy The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder. Arundhati Roy independent profound mean He held her as though she was a gift. Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious. Arundhati Roy given stills 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. Even if we do vote, we should just spend less time and intellectual energy on our choices and keep our eye on the ball. Arundhati Roy eye taken mean There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart. Arundhati Roy hair heart writing It's all a play. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen, there are hundreds of thousands of dead, and the curtain comes down, and that's the end of that. Then Korea happens. Vietnam happens, all that happened in Latin America happens. And every now and then, this curtain comes down and history begins anew. New moralities and new indignations are manufactured...in a disappeared history. Arundhati Roy hiroshima-and-nagasaki korea latin And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature. Arundhati Roy human-nature humans mind Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace Worse Things kept happening Arundhati Roy forever war country America is like some crazed, bewildered, rich giant bumbling around in a poor area with his pockets stuffed with money, and lots of weapons - just throwing stuff around. Arundhati Roy pockets giants america If you want to control somebody, support them. Or marry them. Arundhati Roy support ifs want I don't have the Big Idea. I don't have the arrogance to even want to have the Big Idea. But I believe the physics of resisting power is as old as the physics of accumulating power. That's what keeps the balance in the universe... the refusal to obey. Arundhati Roy arrogance believe ideas At some stage, as the water tables are dropping and the minerals that remain in the mountains are being taken out, we are going to confront a crisis from which we cannot return. The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution. Arundhati Roy taken water people That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much. Arundhati Roy should law made The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke. Arundhati Roy romantic-love romance body Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power. Arundhati Roy relationship world thinking In the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost. Arundhati Roy fighting land people Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered. Arundhati Roy eye mother memories The revolution cannot be funded. It's not the imagination of trusts and foundations that's going to bring real change. Arundhati Roy revolution real imagination When you say things like, 'We have to wipe out the Taliban,' what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway. Arundhati Roy numbers mean america Truly, there's no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defence against it, really.... Arundhati Roy fascism mother Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined. Arundhati Roy space islands country
