Oscar Wilde Quotes About Tyranny

• What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Men, Machines

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, p.24, Oscar Wilde

• The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

  Oscar Wilde

  Strong, World, Lasts

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.208, Oxford University Press on Demand

• There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

  Oscar Wilde

  Government, Soul And Body, People

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.282, University of Chicago Press

• As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

  Oscar Wilde

  Punishment, Community, Political

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Aphorisms”, p.50, Oscar Wilde

• Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Lying, Men

  "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Book by Oscar Wilde, 1891.

• A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Mother, Pain

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.36, GENERAL PRESS

• If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Political, Lasts

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1034, GENERAL PRESS

• Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

  Oscar Wilde

  Government, Unjust, Made

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1049, Wordsworth Editions

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