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A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.

Salman Rushdie

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Salman Rushdie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 19
Actor
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Bombay
Rushdie
Joseph Anton
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Understands
Mature
Argument
Democracy
Society
Heart

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.
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The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is, even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside he will come after you.
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He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he would purchase a pair of green-tinged spectacles which would correct his regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense, blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.
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It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.
Salman Rushdie
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English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.
Salman Rushdie
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One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.
Salman Rushdie
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In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.
Salman Rushdie
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We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.
Salman Rushdie
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The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.
Salman Rushdie
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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
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If by some bizarre chance there turns out to be a god [...], I'm willing to bet he's an atheist too.
Salman Rushdie
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The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.
Salman Rushdie
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It is commonly and, I believe, accurately said of Pakistan that her women are much more impressive than her men.
Salman Rushdie
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What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.
Salman Rushdie
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We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.
Salman Rushdie
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For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an affair.... And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?
Salman Rushdie
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Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
Salman Rushdie
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I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.
Salman Rushdie
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YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.
Salman Rushdie
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It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.
Salman Rushdie