Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Interpretation
Free speech is essential for life and society.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie emphasizes the fundamental importance of free speech as a cornerstone of human existence and societal function. He conveys that the ability to express oneself freely is not just a right, but a vital component that sustains life, fosters dialogue, and shapes culture, making it indispensable to our humanity.
In practice
Citing this quote in a debate about the importance of protecting free speech rights.
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.
Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt about the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation
For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.
People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
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