Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it - because it is a fact.

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The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive.

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Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

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Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

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If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

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Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

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If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

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As to the doubt of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood not a conclusion. My conclusion is the Faith. Corporate, organized, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a theory. It.

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Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

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I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

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We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

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The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

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But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

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The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'

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Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.

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There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.

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Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

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Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.

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(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.

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I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right

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