quotes from classic

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.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is nothing wrong with Americans, except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

If a rhinoceros were to enter this resteraunt now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I would be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Courage is getting away from death by continually coming within an inch of it.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith 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.

more quotes from Gilbert Keith Chesterton