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A rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable.

— Salman Rushdie Address at Columbia University (1991)

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Philosophy

More quotes by Salman Rushdie

The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)

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

Imaginary Homelands p. 391 (1992)

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

Salman Rushdie — Talking with David Frost (1993)

Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion.

Imaginary Homelands (1992)

To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities.

All Salman Rushdie quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Salman Rushdie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.