And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a skepticism towards belief systems influenced by people and their arguments.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie expresses a sense of doubt and disbelief based on the varying reasons provided by individuals. It suggests that when people present conflicting ideas or arguments, it can lead one to question the validity of belief itself, implying that the nature of belief is complex and can be influenced by the perspectives of others.
In practice
During a philosophical debate about religion, this quote could highlight the conflict in belief systems.
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.
If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.
What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
Everyone in Life does Exactly what they Know How to Do Given the Conditions of their Lives
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