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Freedom Quotes by Salman Rushdie

45 Freedom quotes by Salman Rushdie

All Freedom quotes Salman Rushdie’s page

Salman Rushdie argues that when safety and freedom clash, freedom should win. He believes literature and imagination protect liberty, and that the real freedom lies in the ability to argue and express ideas. He also links artistic freedom to human rights and the right to speak.

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Freedom to reject is the only freedom.

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Free speech is life itself.

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Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war.

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The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

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“We have the freedoms we fight for, and we lose those we don’t defend.”

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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

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“... free speech isn't absolute. We have the freedoms we fight for and we lose those we don't defend.”

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“Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too.”

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If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

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Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those…

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Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

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It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

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I believe in the art of literature, I believe in freedom of the imagination, I believe in the kind of liberties that…

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The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

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If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is…

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Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.

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I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for…

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Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is ‘Freedom…

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“The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment…

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“Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpot… I had…

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“The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment…

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“the posture than the results. This language thing is part of that. Excuse me: if you clean up the language too much…

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We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution…

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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize…

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“Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, which crushes its women beneath the…

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“When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent…

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“Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand…

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“He was learning that to win a fight like this, it was not enough to know what one was fighting against. That…

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“I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizen's…

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“The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list,…

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Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has…

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In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual…

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The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle…

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If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is…

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Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best…

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But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of…

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“This leaves only two options: disintegration, or a new dictatorship ... no, there is a third, and I shall not be so…

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But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire…

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In the end, the thing that's important about free expression is that it's the right from which all other rights are derived.…

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You don't just - you often have to defend the freedoms of people you don't like, you know, whose work you don't…

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More by Salman Rushdie

If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.

It's a terrible thing that your life turns into a good story.

Sometimes by a woodland stream he watched the water rush over the pebbled bed, its tiny modulations of bounce and flow. A woman's body…

I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull…

“Después de exigir mi marcha, ya no posees jurisdicción en lo concerniente a mi salud.”

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

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…

I'd wanted to create a storm so that I could become more famous and richer.

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done,…

“...proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.”

“information, in a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy that revealed the extent to which he had internalised the adversarial fragmentation of American culture and made it a…

A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones.…

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their…