“I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The hardest thing to remember about our time, of course, is simply that it is a time- we all instinctively think of… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little power - the power at some… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Now in history there is no Revolution that is not a Restoration. Among the many things that leave me doubtful about the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“My own general thesis was somewhat to this effect: that Artists have worried the world by being wantonly, needlessly, and gratuitously progressive.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nine times out of ten a man’s broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Why is it," he asked vaguely, "that I think you are quite a decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?"… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion, they begin to care more for ambition than for education.… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve,… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act… — G.K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
