Quote

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

Salman Rushdie

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Salman Rushdie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 19
Actor
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Bombay
Rushdie
Joseph Anton
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Humans
Explanation
Havoc
Throughout
Wrought
Total
Claimed
Mere
Fanaticism
Beings
Apostles
Among
Mixed
History
Purity
Human
Possess

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

Image
It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.
Salman Rushdie
Image
I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.
Salman Rushdie
Image
You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
Salman Rushdie
Image
It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.
Salman Rushdie
Image
If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.
Salman Rushdie
Image
The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with.
Salman Rushdie
Image
If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.
Salman Rushdie
Image
I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.
Salman Rushdie
Image
The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.
Salman Rushdie
Image
If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.
Salman Rushdie
Image
But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?
Salman Rushdie
Image
So when I studied history at Cambridge, I did a special subject in that, exactly that. And then actually that - while I was studying it was where I came across the so-called incident of the satanic verses.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.
Salman Rushdie
Image
You can adhere to your faith, but that faith needs to march in line with the rest of the world and needs to find a way of expressing itself in the modern world.
Salman Rushdie
Image
I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Normally when I read, I don't like music playing.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.
Salman Rushdie
Image
You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.
Salman Rushdie