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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

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
What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Home Necessary Reality True
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.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Country Expression Freedom Law Rule Society
In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Art Celebration Different Dreams Law Mythology Society Song Wake Up
I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Myself Reading Writing
Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

End People Weapon Word
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Constitution Freedom Religious Right Talk
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 world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Place Reality World
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing Yourself
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
Reality is a question of perspective.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Deep One Liner Perspective Question Reality
Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bad Believe Demon God Life People Spiritual
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
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Existence Expression Freedom Offense
Only the foolish, blinded by language’s conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it’s melancholy rim, green in it’s envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it’s greatest rages, black.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Black Blind Fire Fools Gold Language Thinking

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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