People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the government. Once abolish the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
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… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
