Quotes from Gilbert K. Chesterton

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

Art is the signature of man.

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

When men cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything

It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'

The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.

Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.

If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.

We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.

It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.

What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

The word good has many meanings.

Progress is the mother of all problems.

There is more to life than increasing its speed. Gandhi gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it? Richard Bach Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Our digestions, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry.

If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?

God is not a symbol of goodness; goodness is a symbol of God