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The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Salman Rushdie

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It’s also for people who you think of as reprehensible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom People Talk Thinking Voice
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Legal Name
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bed Frame Hang Home Notice Shame Wall
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing Yourself
We all owe death a life.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Life 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
What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Funny Kind Present
When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Essence Fall In Love Growth Leaving Production Reading Strange
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

Bad Defense Freedom People Principle Yourself
Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Evidence Family Funny Important Shame Story
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
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
I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Myself Reading Writing
Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Goodness Head Story Voice Worst
I’ve been worrying about God a little bit lately. It seems like he’s been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he’s been getting.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bad God Himself Lover Mood Quality Worry
What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Country Evidence Hate Power Recover Thinking World

The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

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The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

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