G. K. Chesterton Quotes

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It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

G. K. Chesterton
Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

G. K. Chesterton
Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

G. K. Chesterton
But those dealing in the actual manufacture of mind are dealing in a very explosive material. The material is not merely the clay of which man is master, but the truths or semblances of truth which have a certain mastery over man. The material is explosive because it must be taken seriously. The men writing books really are throwing bombs.

G. K. Chesterton
Modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish.

G. K. Chesterton
It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

G. K. Chesterton
No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be...

G. K. Chesterton
But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

G. K. Chesterton
I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

G. K. Chesterton
Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

G. K. Chesterton
But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

G. K. Chesterton
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

G. K. Chesterton
The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

G. K. Chesterton
By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.

G. K. Chesterton
Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.

G. K. Chesterton
Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

G. K. Chesterton
"Proof ! " he cried. Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don't you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed.

G. K. Chesterton
There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.

G. K. Chesterton
It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

G. K. Chesterton
All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

G. K. Chesterton
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.

G. K. Chesterton
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. … The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

G. K. Chesterton
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.

G. K. Chesterton
The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

G. K. Chesterton
A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

G. K. Chesterton
Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

G. K. Chesterton
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

G. K. Chesterton
Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.

G. K. Chesterton
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

G. K. Chesterton
We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.

G. K. Chesterton