Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Wilde suggests that education can empower the lower classes and threaten societal order.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde critiques the English educational system, implying that it has little positive impact on the masses, primarily because it serves to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the upper classes. He suggests that if education were genuinely transformative, it could incite unrest among the lower classes against the perceived injustices of society, particularly in areas associated with wealth and privilege like Grosvenor Square.
Themes
EducationClassPowerSocietyUpper ClassChange
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing educational reform, one might use this quote to highlight the need for empowering all social classes through accessible education.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →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.
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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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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