G.K. Chesterton Quotes

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

~ G.K. Chesterton

I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.

~ G.K. Chesterton

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

~ G.K. Chesterton

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

~ G.K. Chesterton

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

~ G.K. Chesterton

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

~ G.K. Chesterton

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

~ G.K. Chesterton

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

~ G.K. Chesterton

A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

~ G.K. Chesterton

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

~ G.K. Chesterton

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

~ G.K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

~ G.K. Chesterton

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

~ G.K. Chesterton

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Happiness is a mystery like religion, and it should never be rationalized.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.

~ G.K. Chesterton

There are no uninteresting things, there are only uninterested people.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

~ G.K. Chesterton