G. K. Chesterton - Wrong Quotes

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Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

G. K. Chesterton
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

G. K. Chesterton
If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

G. K. Chesterton
The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically
means being wrong

G. K. Chesterton
To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.

G. K. Chesterton
The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.

G. K. Chesterton
Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.

G. K. Chesterton
Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

G. K. Chesterton
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight us by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
And they look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; And they know no songs.

G. K. Chesterton
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.

G. K. Chesterton
We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

G. K. Chesterton
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

G. K. Chesterton
The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door,
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the Spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure.

G. K. Chesterton
There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

G. K. Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

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
There is nothing wrong with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

G. K. Chesterton
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

G. K. Chesterton
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'.

G. K. Chesterton
The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.

G. K. Chesterton
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

G. K. Chesterton
One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.

G. K. Chesterton
The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.

G. K. Chesterton
There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong.... A stiff apology is a second insult.

G. K. Chesterton