The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The modern world has far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not);… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways. ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made… — 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
