Salman Rushdie Quotes
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie, Indian/British Author, Quoted in Jonathan Duffy, "The right to be downright offensive", BBC News Magazine, December 21, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The libel and slander laws in England were then, and are today, dramatically different from those of the United States in two fundamental ways: In America truth is an absolute defense; in England you can’t say true things about people which are personally libelous. Second, in America politicians and public figures are not entitled to a verdict even if the statements are inadvertently or possibly false. Without the Constitutional protections of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the reputations of people including public figures are given much more weight in England than in America.
Nixon’s views of free speech rights did not recognize the right of those who advocate revolution or government or system change in America. By his standard all of the Founding Fathers should not have been entitled to most of their early speeches. The Supreme Court repeatedly rejected his standard, distinguishing between speech to change or reform the government and illegal action to bring those changes about.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie FRSL is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His work, combining magical realism with historical fiction, is primarily concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, with much of his fiction being set on the Indian subcontinent.
