Oscar Wilde

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press.

And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level …

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, …

When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed …

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. …

Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without …

Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely …

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.