Oscar Wilde Quotes

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

Subordinate classes have usually pushed for democracy, dominant classes nearly always have resisted it.

You are afraid of the one, I, of the few.... You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

The state is no more than a machine for oppression of one class by another. This is as true of democracy as it is of monarchy.

France seems travailing in the birth of freedom. Her throes and pangs of labor are violent…. Royalty, nobility, and vile pageantry by which a few of the human race lord it over and tread on the necks of the their fellow mortals, seem like to be demolished …. Ye Gods, with what indignation do I review the late attempt of some creatures among us to revive the vile machinery. Oh Adams, Adams what a wretch thou art!

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

One man’s democratization is another man’s destabilization.

The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station…

The people of England are not, like the people of France, lovers of naked political equality. England is a great lover of liberty; but of equality she never has been so much enamored.

If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness.

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

Was not the issue this: whether mankind should be divided between those who command and those who serve; between those who use others at their will and those who must submit; whether the measure of a man's power to shape his own destiny should be the force at his disposal? Our nation was founded upon an answer to those questions, and we have fought this war to make good that answer.

The good government of one man is the bad government of another

To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince's head.