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All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am myself so exceedingly Nordic, as far as physical constitution is concerned, that I can enjoy almost any weather except what is called glorious weather. At the end of a few days, I am left wondering how the men of the Mediterranean ever managed to do almost all the most active and astonishing things that have been done.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
No man can be merry unless he is serious.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Any one of the strange laws we suffer is a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
