It’s odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian don’t hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and, most entertainingly, to “rid the world of evildoers.”

—Arundhati Roy

war peace irrationality democracy terrorism

About Arundhati Roy

Portrait of Arundhati Roy

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (Bengali pronunciation: [orundʱoti rae̯]; born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political...

More quotations from Arundhati Roy

When we are violent to our enemies, we do violence to ourselves. When we brutalize others, we brutalize ourselves. And eventually we run the risk of becoming our oppressors.

—Arundhati Roy

enemies violence brutality

D’you know what happens when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

—Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things

love relationships hurt

More quotations tagged with “democracy”

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and
the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under
the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and
democracy?

—Mahatma Gandhi

democracy destruction difference liberty

Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battle lines,… but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

democracy bureaucracy

I learned to believe in freedom, to glow when the word democracy was used, and to practice slavery from morning to night. I learned it the way all of my Southern people learn it: by closing door after door until one's mind and heart and conscience are blocked off from each other and from reality.

—Lillian Smith

reality freedom democracy conscience slavery

Television is the first truly democratic culture—the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.

—Clive Barnes

democracy television desire

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

History

23 Feb 2013 Added