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.
Because we believe that our ethnic group, our society, our political party, our God, is better than your God, we kill each other.
Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.
I'm worried that the audience is being conditioned. That's my real fear. Because if they don't want to see wrinkles on the screen, if they actually fear looking at them, then it's only going to get worse. Those of us who don't want to shoot up and cut and sew, we're just not going be cast.
Every day, we at the United Nations see the human toll of an absence of regulations or lax controls on the arms trade. We see it in the suffering of civilian populations trapped by armed conflict or pervasive crime. We see it in the killing and wounding of civilians - including children, the most vulnerable of all.
We live in an age rather skeptical of truth, of its existence." There is a "tendency to believe that nothing is definitive, and think that the truth is given by consent or by what we want. The question arises: does "the" truth really exist? What is "the" truth? Can we know it? Can we find it?
The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.
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