QuoteProject
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Oscar Wilde
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that a belief can lose its validity when it is widely accepted by many people, implying that truth is subjective.

Oscar Wilde's quote examines the nature of truth and belief, proposing that the essence of what is true can be distorted or diluted by the mere agreement of a group. When many people adopt the same belief, it can transform from an absolute truth into a societal construct, revealing the complex interplay between perception and reality. This reflection encourages individuals to approach truth with skepticism and encourages critical thinking.

Themes

TruthBeliefSubjectiveRealityPerception

In practice

Example use cases

In a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
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.
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
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
Oscar WildeRead

Similar quotes

I live in the borderlands. The word ghost sounds like memory. The word therapy means exorcism. My visions echo and multiplymultiply. I don't know how to figure out what they mean. I can't tell where they start or if they will end. But I know this. If they shrink my head any more, or float me away on an ocean of pills, I will never return.
Laurie Halse AndersonRead
Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.
Tibor FischerRead
Suits are malevolent magicians' sleeves for socialists, full of patrician loops and tricks, small, embroidered, cryptic messages of deference and privilege. They are ever the uniform of the enemy. They are also the greatest British invention ever.
A. A. GillRead
If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.
William ShakespeareRead
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
Marcus AureliusRead
Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.
Steven EriksonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.