But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
Interpretation
Terrorism cannot be justified as a means to achieve legitimate goals, as it primarily seeks to harm innocents.
This quote by Salman Rushdie emphasizes the point that terrorism is fundamentally about violence and destruction rather than the pursuit of any righteous or noble objectives. It challenges the notion that perpetrators might claim their violent actions serve a higher purpose, highlighting that their true aim is the murder of innocent individuals, thereby creating a moral distinction between terrorism and valid political discourse or action.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of violence in political movements.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Speech is the mirror of the soul.
If there were no way into God, I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.
The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it's somewhere in there.
Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and - as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis - emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.
Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
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