Quote

Unfortunately, the problem of the free speech argument is that you have to defend people you can't stand.

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
Free
Problem
People
Unfortunately
Defend
Argument
Speech
Stand

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

Image
If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
Salman Rushdie
Image
When I was writing The Satanic Verses, if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.
Salman Rushdie
Image
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.
Salman Rushdie
Image
A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self.
Salman Rushdie
Image
We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.
Salman Rushdie
Image
The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.
Salman Rushdie
Image
I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.
Salman Rushdie
Image
One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.
Salman Rushdie
Image
England in a way is lucky. It's an island, so the frontiers are given by the sea.
Salman Rushdie
Image
If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.
Salman Rushdie
Image
So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.
Salman Rushdie
Image
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
Image
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
Image
History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.
Salman Rushdie
Image
It's always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It's where I come from.
Salman Rushdie
Image
There is nothing like a War for the reinvention of lives.
Salman Rushdie
Image
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.
Salman Rushdie
Image
In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.
Salman Rushdie
Image
Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.
Salman Rushdie
Image
I needed my stuff around me, and in that little cocoon I felt good, and I could work.
Salman Rushdie