Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading should not be restricted by rigid rules, as much of culture derives from what is often deemed unworthy.
Oscar Wilde's quote emphasizes the importance of reading widely and without restrictions, suggesting that many of the cultural insights and knowledge we gain come from texts that may not traditionally be valued or respected. By asserting that 'more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read', Wilde advocates for a more open-minded approach to literature and learning, encouraging readers to explore beyond prescribed norms.
Themes
ReadingCultureOpen-MindednessLiteratureSelf-Discovery
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about literary censorship.
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
I believe in truths, but I don't believe in the Truth. Furthermore, I think that vision of an underlying Truth, with as capital T, that scientists are privy to, has been a very counterproductive vision. It has served scientists very well, but what it has done, above all, is encloses the world of science and immunize it from criticism.
Evelyn Fox KellerRead
New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence.
Paul GoldbergerRead
I'm not me but living matter fermenting and forming its own shapes in the fruitfulness of every day.
Pablo NerudaRead
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Friedrich August Von HayekRead
When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self - the great secret!
Hermann HesseRead
In all the co-temporary discussions and comments, which the Constitution underwent, it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground, that the powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.
James MadisonRead