A Quote by Oscar Wilde

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 them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.

Oscar Wilde

Quote Topics

Absolutely Advance Amongst Civilization Class Come Community Contented Discontent Down Incomplete Meddling Necessary Our People Perfectly Reason Reason Why Seeds Set Some Sow State Them Towards Why Without Would Would Be

Quote Author

Oscar Wilde
Irish - Poet
October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900

If we would have our citizens contented and law-abiding, we must not sow the seeds of discontent in childhood by denying children their birthright of play.

Theodore Roosevelt

To foment grievance and to set men at variance is the trade by which agitators thrive and journalists make money.

Dorothy L. Sayers

We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

William James

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Harold Rosenberg

We don't think there's something wrong with one- year-old children because they can't walk perfectly. They fall down frequently, but we pick them up, love them, bandage them if necessary, and keep working with them. Surely our heavenly Father can do even more for us than we do for our children.

Joyce Meyer

Why should young people look for guides who hang out gided placards to advertise themselves? They would do better to look for friends, unite with them, and advance together towards some quarter where it seems possible to survive.

Lu Xun

Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao. It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free, takes on a physical body, lets circumstances complete it. That is why every being spontaneously honors the Tao. The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them, cares for them, comforts them, protects them, takes them back to itself, creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding without interfering. That is why love of the Tao is in the very nature of things.

Laozi

When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people`s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines democracy. Then you`re doing the work of our adversaries for them.

Barack Obama

Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant, they are incidental to a free and constitutional country, and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages.

Benjamin Disraeli

God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

Philippa Perry

Obama wants to stand for a peaceful, generous, encompassing approach that would bring all Americans, but not just Americans, the whole of international society, together to advance civilization towards what we all understand is necessary to advance. Because of that he's being subjected to very serious rejections from the reactionary portion of the system, which, unfortunately, is the dominant portion.

Gilberto Gil

If Katie Couric or Anderson Cooper asked me to come on to their shows and give them content every single day, I would do it because that gives me access to a huge population of people that I can hopefully, in some way, plant seeds in fertile soil, and those seeds would grow into oak trees of freedom.