Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Fall Quotes

People that insist upon drinking and driving, are putting the quart before the hearse.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Drinking Quotes , People Quotes

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Party Quotes , People Quotes

Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Kings Quotes , Men Quotes

To do Mohammed justice, his main attack was against the idolatries of Asia. Only he thought, just as the Arians did and just as the Unitarians do, that he could attack them better with a greater approximation to plain theism. What distinguishes his heresy from anything like an Arian or Albigensian heresy is that, as it sprang up on the borders of Christendom, it could spread outwards to a barbaric world.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Justice Quotes , Islam Quotes

Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Balance Quotes

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Stars Quotes , Hands Quotes

The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Love Quotes , Beautiful Quotes

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Reading Quotes , Garden Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Plato Quotes , Believe Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Fire Quotes , Hands Quotes

What are we going to do?" asked the Professor. "At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Moments Quotes

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Good Times Quotes

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Essentials Quotes , Next Quotes

There is only one reason an intelligent person doesn't believe in miracles. He or she believes in materialism.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Intelligent Quotes

Science boasts of the distance of its stars; of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is "At Hand."

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Stars Quotes , Distance Quotes

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Funny Quotes , Dog Quotes

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Dirty Quotes , Self Quotes

As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , School Quotes , Support Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes , Men Quotes , Long Quotes