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You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism.

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
Fighting
Conservatism
Radical
Fight
Quite

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

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The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam.
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There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running.
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Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.
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Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading acts too much it becomes irritating to you listening to it.
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If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.
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What's the use of stories that aren't even true?
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Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.
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England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.
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Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images they fight for the same territory.
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I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me.
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Because I've always felt, whether the fatwa or whatever, the writer's great weapon is the truth and integrity of his voice. And as long as what you're saying is what you truly, honestly believe to be the case, then whatever the consequences, that's fine. That's an honorable position.
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The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.
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I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.
Salman Rushdie
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Even the Islam stuff I thought was pretty respectful about Islam in a funny way. I mean, yes, from a secular point of view, but it talks about the birth of this religion, and I thought it was pretty admiring of the person at the center of it, the prophet of Islam.
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With death comes honesty.
Salman Rushdie
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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
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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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Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
Salman Rushdie
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You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
Salman Rushdie
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Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings they don't get hurt you can act and say as you like about them.
Salman Rushdie