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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.
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.
Prove
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Expert
Means
Experts
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Politician
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings but they dream of being shepherds.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Science in the modern world has many uses its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is a case for telling the truth there is a case for avoiding the scandal but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
