Salman Rushdie Quotes

What is liberty? There is no such thing as absolute liberty!

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

Ordinary Chinese can actually make choices about their own lives which wasn’t possible 25 years ago.

Freedom Party International believes that the purpose of government is to protect every individual's fundamental freedoms, not to restrict them.

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

Mankind is at its best when it is most free.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

The problem with this world is that there isn't enough liberty and freedom.

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom.

Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.

If we're living in a free country,we should be free to do what we want to do if we're not hurting anyone else or their property. Why should I be incarcerated if I'm doing something that doesn't hurt anyone else?

I believe, basically, that individual freedom is very important.

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm—as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

The individual is greater than the state.

The world works better when people have freedom.

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

… it [liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home, bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience and generally, to enjoy those privileges long recognized in common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.

It is essential that the young people of this country learn to respect the right of every man and woman to seek his or her happiness with minimal interference from the government.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

The demand for individual freedom leads us to different realms, and it enables us to participate in social events.