A Quote by Arundhati Roy

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 evil-doers.

Arundhati Roy

Quote Topics

Democracy Dismiss Doers Dreamy Eliminate Evil Fascism Going Going To War Hesitate How Install Most Movement Odd Out Peace Reasons Rid Stamp Terrorism Those Utopian War World

Quote Author

Arundhati Roy
Indian - Writer
Born: November 24, 1961

My administration has a job to do and we're going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers.

George W. Bush

The peace movement is a great force for peace. Some of the world's most quarrelsome people act out their aggressions through the peace movement.

John McCarthy

We're never going to be able to get rid of terrorism, because there is always going to be evil in the world.

Abdullah II of Jordan

I think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.

Grace Lee Boggs

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

David Frum

The war on terror is the most insane and immoral war of all time. The Americans are doing what they did in Vietnam, bombing villages. But how can a civilised nation do this? How can you can eliminate suspects, their wives, their children, their families, their neighbours? How can you justify this?

Imran Khan

We have seen many instances where the free world didn't seem to understand the nature of evil or the battle against evil in their time. We've watched Nazism and fascism and imperial Japan and communism and totalitarianism, and now it seems to be we're all battling against terrorism.

Sean Hannity

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

Howard Zinn

People are now looking at the world in terms of axis of evil and evil-doers and by logical extension good-doers, and that's a very polarised look at good and bad people. Reality is much more complex than that and people can be good and evil on the very same day.

Mario Van Peebles

It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale.

Gene Sharp

Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Terrorism is resorted to for practical reasons because there is no other tool available. And those who use terrorism, and then subsequently become the targets of terrorism, understand its power and how difficult it is to counter it. Not just militarily. But especially in terms of international perception.

Jonathan Powell

Militarists say that to gain peace we must prepare for war. I think we get what we prepare for. If we want a world where peace is valued, we must teach ourselves to believe that peace is not a ‘utopian vision’ but a real responsibility that must be worked for each and every day in small and large ways. Any one of us can contribute to building a world where peace and justice prevail.

Jody Williams

We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense.

Timothy D. Snyder

One of the reasons why I thought it was a good decision to put Def Jux on hold is that it's a hell of a lot easier to dismiss something as a movement than to dismiss individuals making good records.