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I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.

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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English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong.
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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.
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No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.... Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.
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It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.
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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.
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There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.
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Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.
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The eagle has no liberty he only has loneliness.
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None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.
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The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.
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A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.
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Surprise is the secret of joy.
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The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
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When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.
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If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
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It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.
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We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
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A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not) it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.
Gilbert K. Chesterton