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Government has become ungovernable that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
Biographer
Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Historian
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Leave
Meekness
Stop
Governing
Law
Feature
Cannot
Chief
Become
Chiefs
Government
Features
Time
Madness
Ungovernable
Laws
Lawless

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Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.
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It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.
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The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.
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I will go forth as a real outlaw, he said, and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway and it will be counted a wilder crime.
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Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.
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If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .
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It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.
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The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.
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I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was.
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Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.
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It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.
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The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
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The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
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If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.
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Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.
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Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
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The ignorant pronounce it Frood To cavil or applaud The well-informed pronounce it Froyd But I pronounce it Fraud.
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The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.
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All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.
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