-
"If people must not be taught religion, they might be taught reason, philosophy. If the State must not teach them to pray it might teach them to think. And when I say that children should be taught to think I do not mean (like many moderns) that they should be taught to doubt; for the two processes are not only not the same, but are in many ways opposite. To doubt is only to destroy; to think is to create."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted by Dale Ahlquist in his book The Complete Thinker.
-
"The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his essay "The Book of Job." Collected in the book In Defense of Sanity.
-
"We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty of allowing us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion. They say they want a religion like this because they are like this already. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do without it."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Catholic Church and Conversion.
-
"Some people have an instinctive itch of irritation against the word 'authority.' Either they suppose that authority is a pompous name for mere bullying, or else, at the best, they think that mere bullying is an excess of authority. Tyranny is the opposite of authority. For authority simply means right; and nothing is authoritative except what somebody has a right to do, and therefore is right in doing. It often happens in this imperfect world that he has the right to do it and not the power to do it. But he cannot have a shred of authority if he merely has the power to do it and not the right to do it.... To abuse authority is to attack authority. A policeman is no longer a policeman when he is bribed privately to arrest an innocent man; he is a private criminal. He is not exaggerating authority; he is reducing it to nothing."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay, "True and False Comparisons"
This essay can be found in the newly released Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 37.
-
"I grew up in a world in which the Protestants, who had just proved that Rome did not believe the Bible, were excitedly discovering that they did not believe the Bible themselves."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book, The Catholic Church and Conversion.
-
"I am not at all disturbed about the future of the Faith; but I am disturbed about the future of the doubters."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay, "The Rout of Reason", collected in the book In Defense of Sanity.
-
"For, given any freedom of that sort, the State does become one vast Foundling Hospital. If families will not be responsible for their own children then officials will be responsible for other people's children.... The total control of human life will pass to the State; and it will be a very Totalitarian State."
– G.K. Chesterton
From the essay "An Alternative to the Family", found in the newly released Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 37.
-
"I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it... The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born; and then let us drown those we do not like."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Well and the Shallows.
-
"A common hesitation in our day touching the use of extreme convictions is a sort of notion that extreme convictions, especially upon cosmic matters, have been responsible in the past for the thing which is called bigotry. But a very small amount of direct experience will dissipate this view. In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Heretics.
-
"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted in G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist
-
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Christendom in Dublin.
-
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book The Everlasting Man.
-
"I read the astounding statement that the Catholic Church regards sex as having the nature of sin. How marriage can be a sacrament if sex is a sin, or why it is the Catholics who are in favour of birth and their foes who are in favour of birth control, I will leave the critic to worry out for himself."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his book Saint Thomas Aquinas.
-
"I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
– G.K. Chesterton
From his Autobiography.
-
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."
– G.K. Chesterton
Quoted in G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist.
Essays and Excerpts of Books by Chesterton
-
How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House
Chapter I of Manalive
A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow.... (read more)
-
St. Thomas More
from The Well and the Shallows
Most would understand the phrase that the mind of More was like a diamond that a tyrant threw away into a ditch, because he could not break it. It is but a metaphor; but it does sometimes happen that the metaphor is many-sided, like the diamond.... (read more)
-
A Simple Thought
from The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic
Most men would return to the old ways in faith and morals if they could broaden their minds enough to do so. It is narrowness that chiefly keeps them in the rut of negation.... (read more)
-
The Problem of the Plantagenets
G. K. Chesterton on St. Thomas Becket, from A Short History of England
It is a point of prestige with what is called the Higher Criticism in all branches to proclaim that certain popular texts and authorities are "late", and therefore apparently worthless. Two similar events are always the same event, and the later alone is even credible.... (read more)
-
The Emancipation of Domesticity
from What's Wrong With the World
Unless the Socialists are frankly ready for a fall in the standard of violins, telescopes and electric lights, they must somehow create a moral demand on the individual that he shall keep up his present concentration on these things.... (read more)
-
The Human Family and the Holy Family
from "The Story of the Family," The Superstition of Divorce
Indeed, there is something in the family that might loosely be called anarchist; and more correctly called amateur. As there seems something almost vague about its voluntary origin, so there seems something vague about its voluntary organisation.... (read more)
-
G. K. Chesterton on Dan Brown: The Interview
The Exclusive Interview with Carl E. Olson
G.K. Chesterton, the famed British journalist, author, apologist, and wit recently sat down (in the form of his books, as he was not physically available) with Ignatius Insight editor Carl E. Olson and discussed the best-selling novelist Dan Brown—whose new novel, The Lost Symbol.... (read more)
-
St. Thomas and St. Francis
from St. Thomas Aquinas
Some time ago I wrote a little book of this type and shape on St. Francis of Assisi; and some time after (I know not when or how, as the song says, and certainly not why) I promised to write a book of the same size, or the same smallness on St. Thomas Aquinas. The promise was Franciscan only in its rashness; and the parallel was very far from being Thomistic in its logic.... (read more)
-
"I despise Birth-Control": G.K. Chesterton on Babies and Distributism
from The Well and the Shallows
I hope it is not a secret arrogance to say that I do not think I am exceptionally arrogant; or if I were, my religion would prevent me from being proud of my pride. Nevertheless, for those of such a philosophy, there is a very terrible temptation to intellectual pride, in the welter of wordy and worthless philosophies that surround us today.... (read more)
-
Mary and the Convert
from The Well and the Shallows
I was brought up in a part of the Protestant world which can best be described by saying that it referred to the Blessed Virgin as the Madonna. It was not a bigoted or uneducated world; it did not regard all Madonnas as idols or all Italians as Dagoes. But it had selected this expression, by the English instinct for compromise, so as to avoid both reverence and irreverence.... (read more)
-
What Is America?
from The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 21
Travel ought to combine amusement with instruction; but most travelers are so much amused that they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame them for being amused; it is perfectly natural to be amused at a Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman for being Chinese. Where they are wrong is that they take their own amusement seriously.... (read more)
-
The God In The Cave
from The Everlasting Man The Everlasting Man
This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave.... (read more)