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There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Gilbert K. Chesterton
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: May 29
Died: 1936
Died: June 14
Autobiographer
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Crime Writer
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
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Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton
G. K. C.
Great
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A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.
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Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.
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There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.
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There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
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The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.
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There are no new lies, no new heresies. Man is simply not that creative.
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There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.
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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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The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.
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Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.
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I represent the jolly mass of mankind. I am the happy and reckless Christian.
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Comradeship is quite a different thing from friendship. . .
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Fairy tales are more than true.
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A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth this has been reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason.
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There is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs.
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Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.
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It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.
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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.
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When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
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Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.
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