1,399 Quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.