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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
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Philosopher
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Men
Caprice
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Democratic
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Future
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More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Progress is the mother of problems.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
. . . For friendship implies individuality whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two but comrades are the better for being two million.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
To be simple is the best thing in the world.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Half a truth is better than no politics.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, Life is not worth living. We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
And it is always the humble man who talks too much the proud man watches himself too closely.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
