Salman Rushdie quotes - page 3

‎No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time. (Salman Rushdie)
Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black. View quote
Salman Rushdie
People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored. View quote
Salman Rushdie
A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape. View quote
Salman Rushdie
This may be the curse of human race. Not that we are different from one anther, but we are so alike. View quote
Salman Rushdie
I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. Not me, not in this lifetime, no chance. Actually Existing Islam, which has all but deified its Prophet, a man who always fought passionately against such deification, which has supplanted a priest-free religion by a priest-ridden one, which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in. View quote
Salman Rushdie
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. View quote
Salman Rushdie
There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history. View quote
Salman Rushdie
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? View quote
Salman Rushdie
We all owe death a life. (Salman Rushdie)
How do you defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. View quote
Salman Rushdie
faith without doubt is addiction. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is good. There will be time for us all to be quiet when we are safely dead. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power. View quote
Salman Rushdie
What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for? View quote
Salman Rushdie
Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet... Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook. View quote
Salman Rushdie
A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true. (Salman Rushdie)
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. View quote
Salman Rushdie
There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull. View quote
Salman Rushdie
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin. View quote
Salman Rushdie