QUOTATION: Atheism

The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Reason and Religion

Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers.

--G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

QUOTATION: Today's Skepticism

The general rule is that nothing must be accepted on any ancient or admitted authority, but everything must be accepted on any new or nameless authority, or accepted even more eagerly on no authority at all.

-- G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Angry

In short, the theory that we must not be angry is the very charter of escape for all evil-doers who are strong enough to awaken anger."

--G.K. Chesterton,  "Vengeance"

QUOTATION: Politics and Religion

I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Christophobia

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Salvation

Everyone wants God to save them from Hell, few want God to save them from sin.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Definition of a CatholicG

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Statism

There is now a false idealism of turning government into God by a vague notion that it gives everything to everybody.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Skepticism

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Inequality of the Sexes?

People talk with a quite astonishing gravity about the inequality or equality of the sexes; as if there could possibly be any inequality between a lock and a key…A woman is only inferior to man in the matter of being not so manly; she is inferior in nothing else. Man is inferior to woman in so far as he is not a woman; there is no other reason.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: How to Have Enough

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

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Socialism

In man there is a natural desire to own, and Socialism, since it fails to gratify that desire, will be intolerable to the mass of men.

--G. K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Fighting

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

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Nominalism

If, as the nominalist says, 'all chairs are different,' how can he call them all 'chairs'?

--G. K. Chesterton.

QUOTATION: New Ideas are Simply Old Mistakes.

The other day a well-known writer, otherwise well-informed, said that the Catholic Church is always the enemy of new ideas. It probably did not occur to him that his own remark was not exactly in the nature of a new idea. It is one of the notions that Catholics have to be continually refuting, because it is such a very old idea... Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making these old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves.

--G.K. Chesterton, “Why I Am a Catholic”

QUOTATION: Religion

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.

--G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion

QUOTATION: Christ is Alive

If I am to answer the question, ‘How would Christ solve modern problems if He were on earth today’, I must answer it plainly; and for those of my faith there is only one answer. Christ is on earth today; alive on a thousand altars; and He does solve people’s problems exactly as He did when He was on earth in the more ordinary sense. That is, He solves the problems of the limited number of people who choose of their own free will to listen to Him.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: The Mass

The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.

-G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Relativism

The modern world will not distinguish between matters of opinion and matters of principle; and it ends by treating them all as matters of taste.

--G. K. Chesterton