G. K. Chesterton - Truth Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

View all G. K. Chesterton Quotes
Paradox has been defined as Truth standing on her head to get attention.

G. K. Chesterton
It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

G. K. Chesterton
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

G. K. Chesterton
The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.

G. K. Chesterton
Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

G. K. Chesterton
Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.

G. K. Chesterton
The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear everyone's account of it, is a theory which has been justified on the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time.

G. K. Chesterton
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

G. K. Chesterton
The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.

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
The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.

G. K. Chesterton
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end

G. K. Chesterton
The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.... The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.

G. K. Chesterton
In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.

G. K. Chesterton
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

G. K. Chesterton
Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

G. K. Chesterton
Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.

G. K. Chesterton
Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.

G. K. Chesterton
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

G. K. Chesterton
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells you the truth about its author.

G. K. Chesterton
There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

G. K. Chesterton
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.

G. K. Chesterton
In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

G. K. Chesterton
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction … for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

G. K. Chesterton
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.

G. K. Chesterton
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

G. K. Chesterton
The prime truth of woman, the universal mother…that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

G. K. Chesterton
If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.

G. K. Chesterton
There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even something of it in the fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where they will in darkness, and for them as for the sceptics the universe may have no centre; kites and vultures may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as for the plutocrats existence may have no origin and no end; but it was far back in the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun.

G. K. Chesterton