The 25 Best Quotes from G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was one of the best writers, thinkers, intellectuals, and promoters of Christianity of the last century. As you’ll see from these quotes, he truly had a great mind.

25) "Being a success at work is not worth it if it means being a failure at home."

24) "I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right."

23) "The reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right."

22) "A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt."

21) "All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change."

20) "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

19) "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

18) "There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

17) "Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion."

16) "We fear men so much because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God."

15) "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."

14) "There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable."

13) "I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees."

12) "In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends."

11) "If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten-thousand commandments."

10) "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."

9) "How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win."

8) "The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."

7) "It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands."

6) "Right is right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it."

5) "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

4) "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out."

3) "Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed."

2) "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."

1) "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything."

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