Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
Interpretation
Disliking someone's ideas does not justify harming them.
This quote from Salman Rushdie highlights a fundamental ethical principle: that differing opinions and ideas, no matter how disagreeable, do not warrant violence or extreme actions against those who hold them. It serves as a reminder of the importance of tolerance, respect, and dialogue in a pluralistic society, emphasizing that the path to understanding should never involve the harm of others.
In practice
During a debate on free speech, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of tolerance.
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.
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.
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
Ashram means a community of men of religion. I feel that an ashram was a necessity of life for me.
Why is it that all men who are outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts are melancholic?
I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.
What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.