Gilbert Keith Chesterton Quotes (49 Quotes)

The chief object of education is not to learn things But to unlearn things.

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

To have a right to do a thing is not the same as to be right in doing it.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people.

To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.

The thing I hate about an argument is it always interrupts a discussion.

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.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that its never been tried ... not that it cant remake the world, but that its difficult.

I believe in getting into hot water it keeps you clean.

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars.

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

True contentment is a real, even an active, virtue not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it.

There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grapenuts in principle.

In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, 'charm', 'spell', 'enchantment'. Theyexpress the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

Art is limitation the essence of every picture is the frame.

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

We say, not lightly but very literally, that the truth has made us free. They say that it makes us so free that it cannot be the truth. To them it is like believing in fairyland to believe in such freedom as we enjoy. It is like believing in men with wing.

Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something but you cannot be discontented with everything.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong.

My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.

There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...

Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it.

Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.

When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.

A good civilization spreads over us like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella artificial, mathematical in shape not merely universal, but uniform.

The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.

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

John Grubby, who was short and stout And troubled with religious doubt, Refused about the age of three To sit upon the curate's knee.

For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these.

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget. For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.

Poets do not go mad but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkeness or so good as drink.

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.