Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Disobedience is essential for progress and is viewed as a virtue.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde emphasizes the importance of disobedience as a catalyst for progress and innovation throughout history. He posits that rather than viewing disobedience as a flaw or wrongdoing, it should be recognized as a fundamental virtue that has enabled humanity to challenge existing norms and drive societal advancements through rebellion and critical thinking.
Themes
DisobedienceProgressRebellionVirtueHistory
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about civil rights, one could cite this quote to highlight the importance of standing up against unjust laws.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes βLondon 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.
Oscar WildeRead
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.
Oscar WildeRead
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar WildeRead
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Oscar WildeRead
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
Similar quotes
My youth passed at the time of the country's reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle.
Lech WalesaRead
Having a strong race lens means you understand racism is threaded through and institutionalized in all of our systems and our very perceptions, threaded through how someone looks at you, treats you, thinks about you and your potential.
Pramila JayapalRead
The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Ronald ReaganRead
You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.
Helene CixousRead
When we grow older and begin to realize that our omnipotence is really not so omnipotent, that our strongest wishes are not powerful enough to make the impossible possible, the fear that we have contributed to the death of a loved one diminishes - and with it, the guilt.
Elisabeth Kubler-RossRead
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
Paul MccartneyRead