The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.
Interpretation
Being labeled as 'controversial' can lead people to search for conflict even when it does not exist.
This quote by Salman Rushdie highlights the challenges of being perceived as controversial. It suggests that when someone is labeled as such, it creates an expectation of conflict, prompting others to seek out or impose trouble where none is intended. This can lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations, reinforcing the idea that perceptions can shape reality.
In practice
In a discussion about freedom of speech, this quote can illustrate the complications of being labeled controversial.
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.
Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.
I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable.
We should know that faith is a gift of God, and that it may not be given to men, except it be graciously. Thus, indeed, all the good which we have is of God; and accordingly, when God rewardeth a good work of man, he crowneth his own gift.
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.
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