Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
Salman RushdieRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Machiavelli is often misunderstood as solely a proponent of deceit in politics, but he had strong republican beliefs and opposed totalitarianism.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie reflects on his admiration for Machiavelli, suggesting that historical perceptions have unfairly branded him as ruthless or manipulative. Rushdie argues that Machiavelli's true intentions were more aligned with republican ideals, emphasizing his discomfort with oppressive governments. This perspective calls for a reassessment of Machiavelli's contributions to political theory, highlighting the complexity of his views beyond the simplistic notion of 'Machiavellian' strategies.
Themes
MachiavelliPoliticsRepublicanismTotalitarianismMisunderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about political philosophy, this quote can be used to illustrate the misconceptions about Machiavelli.
More from Salman Rushdie
All quotes →faith without doubt is addiction
Salman RushdieRead
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
Salman RushdieRead
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?
Salman RushdieRead
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.
Salman RushdieRead
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
Salman RushdieRead
Similar quotes
Being an occupier is not good for anybody's global standing. It is a catalyst for terrorist recruitment.
Samantha PowerRead
I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
Daniel DennettRead
All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.
V. S. PritchettRead
There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as opposed to citizens. The more credible hypothesis, I think, is that there is a kind of trauma, a social trauma that is passed on from generation to generation.
Masha GessenRead
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Jane AustenRead
Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead