Just who was G.K. Chesterton? He was a novelist who wrote The Man Who Was Thursday, a spy story spoofing the genre when it had barely begun. He also wrote detective short stories, inventing one of the most iconic detectives ever: Father Brown. Along with fiction, Chesterton was a journalist who wrote regularly about politics, philosophy, and whatever else struck his fancy. Weaved into his nonfiction and his journalism was his faith, a Christian belief that embraced paradox and comedy, poking fun at atheism in ways that still provide food for thought today.
During his lifetime, Chesterton influenced several people who went on to be iconic Christian thinkers. Dorothy L. Sayers credited Chesterton’s Orthodoxy with helping her recommit to Christianity, and they later knew each other through the Detection Club. C.S. Lewis cited reading Chesterton’s book The Everlasting Man as one of the crucial books that led him out of atheism. Since his 1937 death, Chesterton’s works have influenced thinkers as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Marshall McLuhan.
These quotes give a sampling of Chesterton’s many diverse ideas, from his thoughts on politics to his views on Christianity.
5 G.K. Chesterton Quotes about Humanity
1. “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”
2. “There is one little defect about Man, the image of God, the wonder of the world and the paragon of animals; that he is not to be trusted. If you identify him with some ideal, which you choose to think is his inmost nature or his only goal, the day will come when he will suddenly seem to you a traitor.”
3. “You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come.”
4. “But to say that there is no pain, or no matter, or no evil, or no difference between man and beast, or indeed anything and anything else - this is a desperate effort to destroy all experience and sense of reality; and men will weary of it more and more, when it has ceased to be the latest fashion; and will look once more for something that will give form to such a chaos and keep the proportions of the mind of man.”
5. “People propose an easy way out of certain human responsibilities and difficulties... in the hope that some people will only use it to a moderate extent; whereas it is much more probable that an indefinite number of people will use it to an indefinite extent. It is odd that they do not see this; because the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature than we are.”
5 G.K. Chesterton Quotes about Religion
1. “It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
2. “There is nothing in Paganism to check its own exaggerations; and for that reason the world will probably find again, as it found before, the necessity of a universal moral philosophy supported by an authority that can define.”
3. “At least five times, the faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.”
4. “It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world.”
5. “People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad… It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.”
5 G.K. Chesterton Quotes about Art and Writing
1. “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
2. “The function of imagination is not to make things settled so much as to make settled things strange; not to make wonders facts, but facts wonders.”
3. “Nothing sublimely artistic has ever arisen out of mere art, any more than anything essentially reasonable has arisen out of pure reason. There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth.”
4. “The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but very decidedly of selection and rejection.”
5 “Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear… The baby has known the dragon intimately even since he had an imagination. What the fairy tales provide for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
5 G.K. Chesterton Quotes about Politics
1. “Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy…”
2. “And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”
3. “The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honoring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.”
4. “The modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”
5. “Now the basis of Christianity as well as of Democracy is, that a man is sacred.”
10 Great Books by G.K. Chesterton
Since Chesterton wrote so much, it can be intimidating to decide where to begin reading him. The following 10 books cover a little of everything, from his apologetics to his poetry to his novels, and are all easy to find.
1. Orthodoxy
2. The Ballad of the White Horse
4. The Complete Father Brown Mysteries
5. Heretics
6. Manalive
If you liked this article about G.K. Chesterton, you may enjoy the following:
Surprising C.S. Lewis Quotes and Facts You Didn’t Know
10 Things You Need to know about Dorothy L. Sayers
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10 Things You Need to Know about Ronald Knox
Photo Credit: Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons
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