Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Arguing often stems from a lack of understanding and clarity in thought.
Oscar Wilde's quote suggests that those who engage passionately in arguments often do so from a place of confusion or ignorance. Instead of fostering understanding or seeking truth, they cling to their stances out of a disorientation that prevents clear reasoning or intellectual growth. Arguments become a reflection not of knowledge, but of the absence of it, indicating a deeper struggle within individuals to comprehend complex truths.
Themes
ArgumentIntellectUnderstandingWisdomConfusion
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about morality, one might use this quote to highlight the futility of arguing without a solid foundation.
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.
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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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