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Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.

Salman Rushdie

But there’s one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn’t one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Achievement Creation Goal Innocence Legal Murder People Pursuit Terrorism
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Place Reality World
Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Belief One Liner
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Art Defense Myself Poem Stand Support
I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they’re both amazing ways to understand human nature.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fairy Tale Fantasy Human Myself Talk Thinking Understand Way
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fake Mistake Name Poet Sleep Stop Work World
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Criticism Deserve Fear Religion Respect
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Change Domination Live Power Story Thinking Time True
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Exploration Heart Human Imagination Literature Place Society Spirit Truth
An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Ability Crime Human Nature Story
The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Education Learning Lesson Oneself Teaching Thinking
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Blood Head Hide Mask
One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Negative Public Strange Violence
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Exploration Fiction Ideas Love Movie Science
To understand just one life you have to swallow the world do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Children heavy Life Understand World
If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Better Change Way World Yourself

Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.

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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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Popular Authors

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