Quotes by G. K. Chesterton

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

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“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 say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.”
-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

“Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion”.
-G. K. Chesterton

“There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.”
-G. K. Chesterton, "Heretics", 1905

“All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Defendant (1901)

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Defendant (1901)

“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Flying Inn (1914)

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“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.”
-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy