Arundhati Roy Quotes

The loudest voice in the room, sometimes, is the absent voice of the silenced.

An understanding of Sor Juana's work must include an understanding of the prohibitions her work confronts. Her speech leads us to what cannot be said, what cannot be said to an orthodoxy, the orthodoxy to a tribunal, and the tribunal to a sentence.

We cannot rely upon the silenced to tell us they are suffering.

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.

Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

I can hear the roar of women's silence.

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

Whenever there are enclosing walls, there are abuses behind them.

Silence the voices of some in order to hear the voices of others. Sometimes there is no other way.

You degrade us and then ask why we are degraded. You shut our mouths and ask why we don't speak. You close your colleges and seminaries against us and then ask why we don't know.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

In society, liberty for one may mean the suppression of liberty for others.

I can't discriminate? Oh, that's ripe, coming from a straight white man. What's the matter, baby doesn't feel like he belongs? Well why don't you try a place that was set up just for you? Like the world!

Why talk now when so many things have been said without ever giving me a chance to talk?

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.