Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the oppression faced by women throughout history, suggesting it is a pervasive and enduring form of tyranny.
Oscar Wilde's quote delves into the historical subjugation of women, characterizing it as a profound and lasting tyranny that contrasts with other forms of oppression. He emphasizes that this particular tyranny is not just about strength; rather, it points to societal dynamics where the marginalized exert control over the powerful, leading to a complex and often overlooked aspect of history that continues to impact society.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion on gender studies to illustrate the historical context of women's struggles.
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.
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
Similar quotes
I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.
The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.
It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed.
The point is that our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. It's who we are right now, and that's what we can make friends with and celebrate.
Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.