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The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.
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Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.
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The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work.
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All government is an ugly necessity.
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Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.
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Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
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The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.
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Surprise is the secret of joy.
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Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls but they are the walls of a playground.
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Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth this has been exactly reversed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.
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Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.
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It is human to err and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.
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Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.
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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