To understand just one life you have to swallow the world do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
SALMAN RUSHDIEFrom the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
More Salman Rushdie Quotes
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Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It’s the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.
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Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.
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It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
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No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.
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Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don’t prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn’t prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.
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The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.
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Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.
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Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.
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What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
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Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.
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So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.
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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
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Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.
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Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.
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People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It’s like that. If you’re going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.
SALMAN RUSHDIE