Quote

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.

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.
Ideas
Moves
Find
Wine
Firsts
Among
First
Dangerous
Men
Least
Tamer
Like
Head
Acquainted
Idea
Lion
Moving
Lions

More quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out.
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The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
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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.
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How quickly revolutions grow old and, worse still, respectable.
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It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.
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The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.
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When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
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Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.
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It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here, repeating itself eternally.
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Fairy tales are more than true.
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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
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The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
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...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.
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The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
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No man can be merry unless he is serious.
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The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes.
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Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
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Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
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At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .
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True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
Gilbert K. Chesterton