Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

I've been to every park in every city and not seen a statue to a committee.

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship.

Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.

In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

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

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.

Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

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

Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.

Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?

You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

We're all in the same boat, and we're all seasick.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

Tolerance is a virtue of people who don't believe in anything anymore.

Hope means expectancy when things are otherwise hopeless.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.