Top 143 Quotes by Gilbert 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.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

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

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

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

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.