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

history rebellion progress disobedience

About Oscar Wilde

Portrait of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists in London in the early 1890s. He was a key figure in...

More quotations from Oscar Wilde

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

life memory dullness details

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

truth humor risk death

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

humor time contemporaries

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

dullness breakfast brilliance

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

power winning fairness

More quotations tagged with “progress”

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

—Tom Stoppard

memory progress smell burning bridges

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

—Thor Heyerdahl

simplicity progress complexity

It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.

progress distance process

Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

History

7 Jul 2021 Added