Truth Quote by Salman Rushdie — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”

“...this is our tragedy, she said in his words, our fictions are killing us, but if we didn’t have those fictions, maybe that would kill us too.”

“How treacherous history is! Half-truths, ignorance, deceptions, false trails, errors, and lies, and buried somewhere in between all of that, the truth, in which it is easy to lose faith, of which it is consequently easy to say, it’s a chimera, there’s no such thing, everything is relative, one man’s absolute belief is another man’s fairy tale; but about which we insist, we insist most emphatically, that it is too important an idea to give up to the relativity merchants.”

“‎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.”

“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.”

“Your value lies not in status or title, but in the roots of your character and depth of your compassion.”

“Deriving truth from joy may be far more”

“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.”

“He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!”

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”

“What my parents kept failing to understand was how happy I was when I was alone with my books. There was no pressure to perform or be cute, and books never disappoint-- unless, of course, you've chosen a bad one. But then, you can always put it down and pick up another one without any repercussions.”