G. K. Chesterton
English writer and Christian apologist (1874 to 1936); author of Orthodoxy.
G. K. Chesterton did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Our reading
The Christian ideal was not tried and found wanting; it was found difficult and left untried
Their wordsThe Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Our reading
Property is the ordinary person’s art: everyone should have something to shape as their own
Their wordsProperty is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsOne would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsIt may be said that this institution of the home is the one anarchist institution. That is to say, it is older than law, and stands outside the State.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsThe whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsFor a plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsThe simple key to the power of our upper classes is this: that they have always kept carefully on the side of what is called Progress.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsThe idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house—this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsIt is the attempt of a European country to create a kind of sham Europe which it can dominate, instead of the real Europe, which it can only share. It is a love of living with one’s inferiors.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsPerhaps the truth can be put most pointedly thus: that democracy has one real enemy, and that is civilization.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsThe working objection to the Suffragette philosophy is simply that overmastering millions of women do not agree with it.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsHow can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsNow I am concerned, first and last, to maintain that unless you can save the fathers, you cannot save the children; that at present we cannot save others, for we cannot save ourselves.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsThat is the one eternal education; to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Our reading
State schools for the poor work against parents and impose the customs of the rich minority
Their wordsIn the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsWe can now only avoid Socialism by a change as vast as Socialism. If we are to save property, we must distribute property, almost as sternly and sweepingly as did the French Revolution.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsIt never seems to strike these people that the lesson of lice in the slums is the wrongness of slums, not the wrongness of hair.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsI do not object to Socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce, but because it will leave it so horribly the same.
↗What's Wrong with the World (1910)gutenberg.org All 19 from this book
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Their wordsImagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
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Their wordsThe madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
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Their wordsMysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic.
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Their wordsBut what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.
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Their wordsThere is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed.
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Our reading
The most important things, like marriage, child-rearing and law, must be left to ordinary people
Their wordsIn short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.
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Their wordsTradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.
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Their wordsFor grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
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Their wordsMy acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.
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Their wordsThe point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
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Their wordsPeople first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.