Tantalizing If True

“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin, 1933

“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.”

- G.K. Chesterton, “The New House” Alarms and Discursions

“Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Commonwealth, 1933

“The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.”

- G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 5/29/26

“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”

- G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision; instead we are always changing the vision.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to The Defendant

“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Sidelights on New London and Newer New York

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”

- G.K. Chesterton, The Speaker, 12/15/00

“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.”

- G.K. Chesterton, A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901