The exchange contrasts two approaches to dealing with a dangerous opponent. Captain Dexter represents restraint: the authorities do not yet have sufficient grounds to act decisively against Mr Big, so their immediate policy is to tolerate him while the investigation develops. Bond responds with a deliberately harsher variation on the familiar phrase “live and let live”.

His phrase, “live and let die”, expresses the professional outlook Fleming gives Bond as an intelligence operative accustomed to lethal situations. Rather than suggesting coexistence with a determined enemy, Bond treats such encounters as conflicts in which survival may require the opponent’s destruction.

The passage therefore establishes a tension between institutional caution and individual decisiveness. It also characterises Bond’s attitude towards his profession: violence is presented not as an abstract principle, but as a possible consequence of confronting adversaries whom he regards as dangerous and irreconcilable.