549 Quotes by G.K. Chesterton

How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

But, after all, the real specialist on Cannibalism is the Cannibal. Nobody could be more swiftly and splendidly on the spot than he is, when there is any Cannibalism going forward. The objection to the Cannibal as a judge of Cannibalism is not that he is ignorant of Cannibalism, or remote from Cannibalism, or not on the spot as a specialist in Cannibalism. It is that he is just the least tiny little bit biased.

Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions.

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

...even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that he is also a reactionary.

...the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain.

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

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