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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 to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path."
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"What does greed mean? Greed means taking away what belongs to others."

"One is God himself, [but] for how long does that authority of God last? As long as he speaks the truth, practices non-violence, does not steal, practices celibacy and remains non-acquisitive " till then power of God will remain."

"Every animal is biologically designed by Nature to do wrong in return. It takes a human being to not do wrong in return."

"All humans are rogues. Cured only by death."

"Do we ignore the needyto spite the greedy?Or share and defenddespite those who pretend?"
Explore more quotes by Salman Rushdie


"There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment. For such people the Past vanishes and the future loses meaning. There is only the Present, which means that two of the three Aalim are surplus to requirements. And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays, in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home, or a dreadful crime. And some people live only for a better tomorrow; for them the past ceases to exist."


"Fury...sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal....drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths."


"Human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions."


"Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory."


"What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers."


"What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry."
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