“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

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

– G. K. Chesterton

“Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.”

— Erica Jong, from How To Save Your Own Life

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

– G. K. Chesterton

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

– G. K. Chesterton