Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that while political leaders have temporary tenure, the influence of journalism lasts longer and shapes public perception.
Oscar Wilde's quote reflects on the transient nature of political power, particularly the presidency in America, which is limited to a four-year term. In contrast, he suggests that journalism holds a more enduring power, as it continuously influences and governs public discourse, opinions, and the political landscape, thus having a lasting impact on society and culture.
In practice
During a speech about media freedom, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of journalism.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?
For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.
Extremism can flourish only in an environment where basic governmental social responsibility for the welfare of the people is neglected. Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.
A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.