Gilbert K. Chesterton

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.

There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.

I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular.

War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.

None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.

Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.

Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing.

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

There is no such thing as Success....That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice.

They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.