Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The worth of an idea is independent of the person's sincerity or character who presents it.
Oscar Wilde emphasizes that an idea's significance is not influenced by the intentions or integrity of the person voicing it. This challenges the notion that the value of ideas should be judged by the speaker's credibility, highlighting the importance of the idea itself rather than the individual behind it.
Themes
IdeasValueSincerityExpressionPerspective
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about social reform where various ideas are presented regardless of the politicians' backgrounds.
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
The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings.
Stephen CoveyRead
And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
When we step out of our normal world and leave behind us all the usual barriers and prejudices, we tend to become more adventurous.
Paulo CoelhoRead
How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook!
Aldo LeopoldRead
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
Annie DillardRead
To be wise is to be eternally curious.
Frederick BuechnerRead