We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
Interpretation
The quote critiques those who label others as bigots for holding firm beliefs after deep thought.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote highlights the irony of how society often dismisses individuals who have deeply considered their beliefs, branding them as bigots or dogmatic. It emphasizes that rigorous thought and commitment to one's conclusions can sometimes lead to misinterpretation by others who may not understand the depth of that reasoning, suggesting that true understanding requires openness to different perspectives rather than quick judgments.
In practice
In a debate about freedom of speech, one might say, 'As Chesterton pointed out, we must be careful not to label those with firm views as bigots without understanding their perspective.'
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
Years, following years, steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.
The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.
I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
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