What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the idea of growth and evolution of thoughts and ideas over time.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie reflects on the process of how small ideas can develop into vast and complex constructs. Starting from something as simple as a full stop, the narrative progresses through various stages of expansion, ultimately suggesting that thoughts can evolve into comprehensive and intricate systems of knowledge, akin to languages or encyclopedias, which denotes the power of language and expression in human experience.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one might say, 'As Salman Rushdie noted, what starts as a small idea can evolve into something monumental.'
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.
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.
I court not the votes of the fickle mob.
He who cherishes the value of cultures cannot fail to be a pacifist.
An intellectual inferiority of the masses would manifest itself most evidently in their aiming at the abolition of the system in which they themselves are supreme and are served by the elite of the most talented men.
I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.
All lives have an equal value.
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