G.K. Chesterton is one of my favorite authors. One of the reasons for this is because he so quotable. There seem to be no end to the application of his sayings, still. Here, in no particular order, are my 20 favorite G.K. Chesterton quotes.
1. “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
Seriously, though, why aren’t there more poems about cheese?
2. “Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
Go out there, and slay those dragons!
3. “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
4. “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
5. “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
6. “To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
7. “I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.”
Hey, wait a second…
8. “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”
9. “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
10. “Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”
11. “If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.”
12. “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
13. “There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”
14. “It has been often said, very truely, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.”
15. “It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”
16. “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
17. “We are learning to do a great many clever things. . . . The next great task will be to learn not to do them.“
18. “The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.“
19. “A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.“
20. “The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.“
This one is frustrating because it’s true.
Which Chesterton quotes did we miss? Share them in the comments!