How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.

Rushdie’s aphorism frames terrorism as a strategy aimed less at physical destruction than at psychological domination. To “defeat” it, he suggests, is to deny it its intended payoff: widespread fear that reshapes daily life, politics, and culture. The line implies civic resilience—continuing ordinary freedoms, refusing collective panic, and resisting overreactions that erode open society. It also carries an ethical warning: if fear drives a community into censorship, suspicion, or authoritarian measures, terrorism succeeds by proxy. In Rushdie’s broader public stance on free expression and intimidation, the quote reads as a call to courage and to maintaining liberal values under threat.