The needs of society determine its ethics.

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

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

As one reads history… 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 brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

history crime cruelty punishment community

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

More quotations tagged with “society”

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

—John Stuart Mill

Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse.

—Irv Kupcinet

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

—Bertrand de Jouvenal

Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.

—Arthur Stringer

History

11 Jul 2015 Added