Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Wilde critiques the impact of education on societal ignorance and the potential danger it poses to the elite.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde expresses his skepticism about the value of education, suggesting that it disrupts the natural state of ignorance which he likens to an exquisite fruit. He argues that education, instead of enlightening individuals, might actually challenge the status quo and lead to unrest among the privileged classes, emphasizing his belief that a lack of awareness can be safer for societal harmony.
Themes
EducationIgnoranceSocietyOscar WildeUpper Classes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech on the flaws of the educational system.
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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Similar quotes
I like that there are young people being given opportunities to explore and learn and grow and become themselves with a path that is associated with my mother. She would have liked that very much.
Maya Soetoro-NgRead
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
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Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.
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I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
When you're a kid, you learn whatever your parents think until you start taking in media. Because all your friends are your age as well, media is the third parent that you ever have. So I think about that a lot, what visual imagery is teaching us, and media in general having a huge impact.
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I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.
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