Gilbert K. Chesterton Philosophical Quotes

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Writer, Journalist

Philosophical

“The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle”

Men Two House

♥ 3

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Writer, Journalist

Philosophical

“The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.”

People Christmas Wake Up

♥ 3

Philosophical

“We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.”

Past History

♥ 3

Philosophical

“The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact.”

Firsts Science

♥ 3

Philosophical

“Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America.”

Law America Science

♥ 3

Philosophical

“When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”

Men Law Wish

♥ 3

Philosophical

“The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

Men Children Catholic

♥ 3

Philosophical

“The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

Mean Past Christian

♥ 3

Philosophical

“Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.”

Exercise Sea Infinite

♥ 3

Philosophical

“The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.”

Belief Torture Martyr

♥ 3

Philosophical

“IF we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.”

Thinking Real Hero

♥ 3

Philosophical

“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.”

Men Doubt Dogma

♥ 3

Gilbert K. Chesterton — Philosophical Quotes

Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes