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Religion Quotes by Salman Rushdie

60 Religion quotes by Salman Rushdie

All Religion quotes Salman Rushdie’s page

Doubt is described as a kind of belief that sits opposite of blind faith. Rushdie suggests that the answer to religion is not to quit it, but to think about it in a new way. He also mentions revelation as a sincere phenomenon even for non‑believers.

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From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

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Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.

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faith without doubt is addiction

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Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.

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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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The answer to religion is not no religion, but another way of thinking of it. Another way of being in it.

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Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

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I have no problem with people's religious beliefs. I just don't happen to have any.

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If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

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“The ruthlessness of the godly invalidated their claims of virtue.”

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We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

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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 have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to…

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“I allowed myself the supernatural, the transcendent, because, I told myself, our love of metaphor is pre-religious, born of our need to…

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As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is…

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There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition…

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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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Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion'. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes,…

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“It is hard for a person of no faith like myself to comprehend the moment when faith dies in the human heart.…

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“She made only one educational stipulation: religious instruction. Unlike Aziz, who was racked by ambiguity, she had remained devout. 'You have your…

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And using that - the birth of a religion, it suggests that you have got two tests. You have the test of…

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“Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war,…

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In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no…

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“Morality came before religion, and religion was our ancestors' way of responding to that built-in need. And if that was so, then…

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“He did not wish to be divine. If there had never been a God, the emperor thought, it might have been easier…

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When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When…

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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…

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“If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all…

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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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“The police arrived and went to question the driver of the truck, who was still sitting in his cab, scratching his head.…

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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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“Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt. The human…

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To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim.[...] I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I…

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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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Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

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I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a religion came after me.

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I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.

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“Mahound comes to me for revelation, asking me to choose between monotheist and henotheist alternatives, and I'm just some idiot actor having…

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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…

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To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of…

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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…