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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

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
If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Evil Existence Expression Goodness History Ideas People Understand
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing Yourself
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Destroy Easy Oneself Power Room Solitude Writing
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
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Decision Lying Serious Talk Try
I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Myself Writing
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Book Easy Yourself
Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Dreams Evil Fantasy Goodness Greatness Home Journey Man
Faith without doubt is addiction.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Addiction Doubt Faith
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
Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Family Friendship Important Inheritance Myself
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
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
We were language’s magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bright Language Shine Sound Steal Theft
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

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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