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Oscar Wilde (courtesy beatlessongwriting.blogspot.com)

“Selfishness is not living your life as you wish, it is asking others to live their lives as you wish.” – Oscar Wilde

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38 COMMENTS

  1. I think this one is also a perfectly accurate quote by Wilde:
    “IN ALL MATTERS OF OPINION, OUR ADVERSARIES ARE INSANE.”
    – OSCAR WILDE

    The grabbers think we’re crazy. We know they are.

  2. Hmm never thought Lurch was a communist before he died and the Adams Family hired him as a butler, but it makes sense now no wonder he was always so dull & joyless.

  3. Another quote on the same theme:

    “Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

    —Robert A. Heinlein

  4. I frequently rephrase questions in different ways to make my students think. “Should anyone deemed mentally incompetent be denied a gun?” may be rephrased as “Should the government use a medical diagnosis to restrict your rights?” Frequently it comes down to “Is it okay to expect others to live by your standards?”

    • I don’t know, man. I think I still answer yes to the 2nd question. Blind? I don’t want you on the road. Untreated narcolepsy or serious epilepsy? Ditto. It’s a public safety issue. If course, the answer isn’t ALWAYS yes. Someone with early stage cancer or gum disease doesn’t endanger people on the road.

      • You saying blind people can’t drive? Well fudge you, youj bigot!

        /sarc

        IMO I have no problems with armed blind people (most criminals are scared away without shooting them).

        Then again blindness might not be that big of a problem in the future when you consider things like synthetic eyes or eye replacement. It isn’t as common now but in the future body augmentation/fixing will be much bigger and more common than now.

        That, or I have played way too much Deus Ex.

      • I go by innocent until proven incompetent. Antis will use this to justify background checks. If NICS theoretically worked right (and it doesn’t) then history of mental illness or blindness could stop such purchases.

        Speaking about NICS, do you know there is often a week’s delay between someone being put in jail and their NICS record update being submitted by the police?

  5. This gay icon is the quote of the day? Kinda’ doubt he’d be on our side if he was alive today. Oscar & Aubrey Beardsley would be dancing in the pride parade saying how horrible all gun owners are…or maybe they’d be Code Pink. Beats the h#ll out of me.

    • Oscar Wilde was, with good reason, real skeptical of state power. He was tried three times before being convicted of homosexuality, after which he was sentenced to two years in prison at hard labor. I don’t know why it took three trials — the guy was pretty obviously flaming, but whatever.

      There are lots of gay people who own or carry for personal protection because they don’t want to chose between being in the closet and potentially being the target of a hate crime. With a gun, they can be flaming AND safe….yeah, ‘murica 😉

      One of my good friends from my hometown has two mommies. One of them taught us how to shoot and took us shooting regularly. She is a crack shot, can probably drive nails with a target pistol, and a much better shot than my other teacher — a local cop who volunteered to teach my Boy Scout troop.

      At the time I didn’t appreciate how odd and funny that was: this total hippy lesbian lady being able to out shoot the manly police officer and volunteer firearms instructor. I also didn’t appreciate how lucky I was to have these two adults to teach me, since my family had zero interest in shooting.

  6. WTF lol-you totally MISSED the code pink reference. No one alive today knows what Ocar Wilde would endorse ( except himself).

    • “Kinda’ doubt he’d be on our side if he was alive today. Oscar & Aubrey Beardsley would be dancing in the pride parade saying how horrible all gun owners are”

      Kinda hard to miss what you mean by that one.

      Also Code Pink disappointed me, why target civilian guns? Why not stick to denouncing government gats and human rights abuses in Palestine?

  7. The actual quote plus a little more of what he wrote is this:

    Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them.

    It is from the Soul of Man under Socialism. Wilde was arguing that socialism would lead to individualism.

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