Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful. As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science. And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

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

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Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

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Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

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I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.

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Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.

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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

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The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

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"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

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We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.

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The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

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The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

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The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

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If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

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Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.

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

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Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.

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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

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The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century.

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Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

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