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War Quotes by Arundhati Roy

58 War quotes by Arundhati Roy

All War quotes Arundhati Roy’s page

Arundhati Roy points out that war is sometimes sold as a mission to free women, even when bombs are used. She notes that weapons fuel markets and that peace can become another industry that manages public anger. Governments survive wars while ordinary people suffer.

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“Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles...”

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“Life went on. Death went on. The war went on.”

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Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.

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“Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?”

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“In battle, Musa told Tilo, enemies can’t break your spirit, only friends can”

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“Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)”

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There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.

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Peace, Inc. is sometimes as worrying as War, Inc. It's a way of managing public anger. We're all being managed, and we…

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Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is…

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Human beings seem unable to live without war, but they are also unable to live without love.

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“In the years to come, when the war became a way of life, there would be books and films and photo exhibitions…

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“But eventually, the Elixir of the Soul that had survived wars and the bloody birth of three new countries, was, like most…

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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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“Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises--War and Shopping--simply will not work.”

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“The war against terror is not really about terror. It's about a superpower's self-destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hemegony.”

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The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their…

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Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are…

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Mao said he was prepared to have millions of Chinese people perish in a nuclear war as long as China survived... I'm…

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I think it was 50 million people across the world who marched against the war in Iraq. It was perhaps the biggest…

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Capitalism’s real “grave-diggers” may end up being its own delusional Cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they…

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It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going…

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Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multitiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by…

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Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when…

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Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame…

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We're supposed to forget whatever happened in the past because 9/11 is where history begins. Okay, since 2001, how many wars have…

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In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation…

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Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it…

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Talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work. There was a time…

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The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't…

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“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame…

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Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was…

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“But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching.…

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“…though he hated to admit it, they were all Anglophiles. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped…

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Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of…

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“in Delhi there was no war other than the usual one – the war of the rich against the poor.”

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Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.

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It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from…

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Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse…

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I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the…

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India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are…

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More by Arundhati Roy

...As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart deals," to…

In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can…

Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is…

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they…

I've never been that person who thought that because I've written one novel, I should write another and another. It's only when there was…

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used.

I think one of the saddest things that's happening to literature is that it's getting over-simplified by this diet of simple political ideas.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there…

Truly, there's no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defence against it, really…

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to…

“stilts, the ground floors given over to parking. It’s a good idea in this car-maddened city,”

“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that…