Arundhati Roy Quotes

Financial institutions, the corporate world and civil society - all must uphold high standards of probity in their working. Only a genuine partnership between the Government and its people can bring about positive change to create a just society.

Everyone in America seems to be joining an organization of some kind, and in Congress one hears from them all.

It never hurts to be involved in any political or activist organization. I can never see how participation would be a bad thing. The key is being true to what you participate with and who.

It was simply this: silence is not a neutral position, whatever your intentions. Silence automatically supports the status quo. When you are a presence that lacks a voice, you create an empty space that another voice - a dominating voice that knows no boundaries - is only too happy to fill.

What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way.

You wanna know how you know you're informed as a protestor? They don't show your interview on TV.

The movers and shakers on our planet, aren't the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising.

As Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist, said: "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." You need the truth, and you also need a demand, and you need to bring that demand into the realm of electoral politics. If you don't do that, it's very hard to get such an entrenched machine to move.

If Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign were part of the establishment, that would be time for all of us to just quit having to work so hard and defend it and fight for it.

Now we're in a situation where democracy has been taken into the workshop and fixed, remodeled to be market-friendly. So now the United States is fighting wars to instal democracies. First it was topple them, now it's instal them, right? And this whole rise of corporate-funded NGOs in the modern world, this notion of CSR, corporate social responsibility - it's all part of a New Managed Democracy. In that sense, it's all part of the same machine.

I'm not very comfortable being an actorvist so to get to do something that I believe in is a much more comfortable way for me to be political.

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.

I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.

All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here.

I've always respected those who tried to change the world for the better, rather than just complain about it.

Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights.

If scientists and scholars were to become "collectively self-organised and consciously activist" today, they would probably devote themselves to service to state and private power. Those who have different goals should (and do) become organized and activist.

From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

Inequality is the cause of all local movements.

The rhythm of being an activist today involves a pretty simple rhythm. You have to open your eyes to the reality before you. You have to look and see.

My own feeling is that a corporation has no right to have a political or social influence.

The problem in this world is not civil disobedience...th e problem in this world is civil obedience.

When the students in the South, the blacks, started demonstrating, that was the beginning of the time of students becoming a social force around the world.

Look at what I've done my entire life. I have been working on behalf of civil rights, women's rights, human rights for years and I know how challenging it is to change our political system and I have the highest regard for those who have put themselves on the line.