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The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
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.
People
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Democratic
Alone
Future
Dream
Past
Despotic
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Caprice
More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
I will not call it my philosophy for I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
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
Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children respect when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the things you forget even to teach that they learn.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
By all men bond to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
