but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.

As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.

Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?