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.
Salman RushdieโRespect for religionโ has become a code phrase meaning โfear of religion.โ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.
Salman RushdieโNo people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.
Salman RushdieAs human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right.
Salman Rushdie