Arundhati Roy Quotes

A flag translates into everything, from tacky souvenirs to the names of organizations and the way that flags function.

It’s a little strange, this obsession with the flag. It’s incomprehensible to someone who comes from a country where the flag has, so to speak, disappeared, where any nostalgia and concern for it is a sign of an attachment to the past…

I despise any flag, not just the American flag. It's a symbol of a piece of land that's considered more important than the human lives on it.

A flag should unite those over whom it flies.

With a flag you can lead people wherever you want.

Where new states have come into being, they have invariably swaddled themselves in sacred symbols and shibboleths forged in more dedicated struggles, beginning with an often random tricolor and a national anthem.

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.

I'm about as far from being a flag-waver - you won't find any American flag pins in my drawer - as someone can be.

I'm not really clear what the whole deal is with flags. I like my flag, but I wouldn't die for it. There's issues of identity, of course. That's going to always come in. I, for example, don't want to be called a 'North Britisher.' I want to be Scottish.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Respect for the flag transcends political party.

We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige.

It's your flag and my flag.

Show me the race or nation without a flag, and I will show you a people without any pride.

I have loved but one flag and cannot share that affection with the mongrel banner designed for the League [of Nations.]

Corporate America has conceived a Bicentennial plan to manipulate, the mass psychology of an entire nation back into conformity with its vision of what the American life should be The strategy will be to speak of the greatness of America to those who feel insignificant; to speak of patriotic commitment to those who feel isolated and contused. The long range goal is to convince people that the problems facing America can be solved by existing institutions.

A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole, It does not look likely to stir a man's soul. 'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag, When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

National pride is the culmination of a lifetime public relations campaign of psychological mind-control techniques.

America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.