100+ Best Chesterton Quotes That Inspire & Challenge Your Mind

"Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence, but obeying in spite of the consequences."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

"It is always the secure who are humble."

"Doubt is an element of faith. It is impossible to say that one believes in anything with complete credulity."

"The Church is much too wise to solve the problem of sin by denying the existence of the sinner."

"When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing—they believe in anything."

"The Christian religion asks us to believe in a miracle precisely when everything else fails."

"A man who believes in himself sees all things in the light of hope."

"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction."

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

"We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."

"The test of all happiness is gratitude."

"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart have always done so because they wish to wound."

"Logic and truth, as a matter of fact, have very little to do with each other."

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

"The ultimate truth of things is not merely logical, but imaginative and emotional."

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

"The world does not lack for critics, but for lovers."

"The trouble with modern man is that he has substituted discussion for experience."

"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite."

"It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem."

"The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

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

"Children are innocent and love justice; while most grown-ups are wicked and prefer mercy."

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people."

"We often give children presents that they do not like, because we think they ought to like them."

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land."

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors."

"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

"The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost."

"The democratic idea is not that government should be weak, but that government should be strong enough to let the people rule."

"The test of all happiness is gratitude."

"We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."

"The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man."

"Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian."

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things to be settled in the everlasting leagues of fairyland—the happy island of ‘once upon a time.’"

"The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in."

"Man seems to be the only creature on earth that is expected to be discontented with the conditions of life."

"The rich man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least."

"To look at a thing as dreadful because it is dreadful and dark in itself, is only cowardice; but to look at a thing as dark and dreadful because it is the shadow of divine light and love—this is courage."

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor."

"Democracy means government by the uncommon man."

"The real dignity of the poor man is to be different from the rich man."

"The demand for equality has two sources: one of them is desire for liberty, the other is desire for envy."

"True equality means equal claim to unequal things."

"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

"The ordinary man is a solid and lasting thing; the average man is a statistical fiction."

"A democracy intends progress, but its engine is tradition."

"The true citizen is not one who merely votes, but one who knows why he votes."

"The mob goes mad in order that it may be dignified."

"It is not democracy if the poor can vote and the rich can count the votes."

"The voice of the people is not necessarily the voice of God, but it is the voice of the people."

"The only force that can hold a democracy together is culture—and culture means shared stories, shared symbols, shared sacrifices."

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors."

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the ends, but never the means."

"The man who moves forward and the man who stands still are alike in one thing—they both stand on the earth."

"Reform is not improvement. Reform is often conservation."

"The business of reformers is not to invent new ideas, but to revive old ones."

"Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out."

"The future is not made by breaking with the past, but by carrying it forward."

"The only way to be truly radical is to go back to the root."

"We are too young to know that certain things are impossible, so we do them."

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

"The old laws of England were bad, but by living under them we learned how to make good ones."

"Tradition is the democracy of the dead."

"The Church is much too wise to solve the problem of sin by denying the existence of the sinner."

"Sin is not a disease; it is a war."

"The modern world is filled with people who feel guilty without knowing why."

"The worst sin is to be comfortable in your sins."

"Men have long ago ceased to believe in God, but they still believe in guilt."

"The devil is the ultimate individualist."

"The man who forbids himself nothing soon finds that he can enjoy nothing."

"Moral courage is the most important of all the kinds of courage."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"The Christian is quite free to become a monk or a hermit; but he is forbidden to become a misanthrope."

"The real measure of morality is not what we permit, but what we protect."

"The more we forgive, the more we understand that forgiveness is necessary."

"Art is the signature of man."

"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason."

"The artist is a man who sees things other people miss."

"Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do."

"All art is propaganda, and I suppose all propaganda is art."

"The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, but to make settled things strange."

"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

"The artist sees the invisible and feels the intangible."

"Beauty is the signature of truth."

"The highest form of art is laughter."

"We should treat all dogs as equals, but every dog must know his place."

"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder."

"Freedom is not the absence of restraint, but the presence of order."

"The man who throws away his freedom throws away his responsibility."

"The only true freedom is the freedom to do what is right."

"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."

"Authority is not the enemy of freedom; it is its foundation."

"The most dangerous criminal is the man who thinks he is above the law."

"Without rules, there can be no game; without laws, there can be no liberty."

"The anarchist is not the lover of freedom, but the hater of order."

"The state exists to serve the people, not the people to serve the state."

"The only safe place for the free man is under the protection of just laws."

"The freest man is not the one who does what he wants, but the one who wants what he ought."

"Obedience is the mother of freedom."

"The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man."

"Man is more himself when he laughs than when he thinks."

"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor."

"The human race, to which so many of the things belong that I cannot name without a sense of shame, is the only thing in the world I am proud to belong to."

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land."

"The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost."

"The rich man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least."

"The real dignity of the poor man is to be different from the rich man."

"The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"The world does not lack for critics, but for lovers."

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."