G

G.K. Chesterton Wisdom

(1874 - 1936)

Timeless Truths

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. - Tremendous Trifles
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man. - A Utopia of Usurers, CW, V, p396
The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. - A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. - Everlasting Man, 1925
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. - ILN, 4/19/30
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. - The Speaker, 12/15/00
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. - On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism. - Sidelights on New London and Newer New York
He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. - Tremendous Trifles, 1909
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. - A Miscellany of Men
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. - The Man Who was Thursday, 1908
The simplification of anything is always sensational. - Varied Types
Complaint always comes back in an echo from the ends of the world; but silence strengthens us. - The Father Brown Omnibus
Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish. - ILN 1-11-08
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid. - ILN 6-3-22
The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel. - Sir Walter Scott, Twelve Types
The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are. - Introduction to The Defendant
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. - A Short History of England, Ch.10
All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing. - On Gargoyles. Alarms and Discursions
The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. - ILN 2-10-06
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera. - The Quotable Chesterton
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any. - ILN 11-7-08
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog. - Broadcast talk 6-11-35
Aesthetes never do anything but what they are told. - The Love of Lead Lunacy and Letters
The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce. - ILN,12/25/09
The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right. - ILN 10-28-22
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it. - Charles II Twelve Types
Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink. - Wine when it is red All Things Considered
When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale. - Heretics, CW, I, p.143
A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish. - Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox

Free Advice

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. - The Common Man
Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street. - ILN, 11/16/07
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them. - Chesterton Review, February, 1984
I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. - ILN, 10/7/16

The Cult of Progress

Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. - Chapter 2, Heretics, 1905
Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. - Orthodoxy, 1908
My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday. - New York Times Magazine, 2/11/23
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. - What's Wrong With The World, 1910
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. - Orthodoxy, 1908
The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic. - ILN, 5/29/26
Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it. - Commonwealth, 1933
A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possible be alive. - A Miscellany of Men
None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them. � Daily News 7-21-06
I still hold. . . that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth. - The Coloured Lands
The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings. - The New House Alarms and Discursions
To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. - A Somewhat Improbable Story. Tremendous Trifles
This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities. - ILN, 12/20/19
The past is not what it was. - A Short History of England

War and Politics

[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution. - ILN, 7/19/19
War is not 'the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you. - ILN, 7/24/15
There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting. - Everlasting Man, 1925
The only defensible war is a war of defense. - Autobiography, 1937
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. - ILN, 1/14/11
How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable. - The Listener. 3-6-35

Government and Politics

Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God. - Christendom in Dublin, 1933
America is the only country ever founded on a creed. - What I Saw In America, 1922
The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922
The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed. - What I Saw In America, 1922
When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. - Daily News, 7/29/05
Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern. - The New Name, Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays, 1917
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence. - Chapter 3, What's Wrong With The World, 1910
He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative. - Varied Types
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. - Tremendous Trifles, 1909
For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. - All Things Considered, 1908
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. - ILN, 4/6/18
It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular. - A Short History of England. 156
I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel. - The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, Act III
It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged. - The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21
There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants. � Outline of Sanity CW. V. 192
All government is an ugly necessity. � A Short History of England. 63
It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote. - ILN, 8/17/18
It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on. - Patriotism and Sport, All Things Considered
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. - ILN, 4/19/24

Society and Culture

I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations. - ILN, 10/4/19
With all that we hear of American hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that Americans seem to like to linger on longer words. - What I Saw in America
It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. - The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, Act III
I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. - Uses of Diversity
There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet. - ILN Dec 18, 1926
Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men. - ILN 9-11-09
By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men. - ILN, 3/25/11
The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies. - The Way to the Stars Lunacy and Letters
Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. - The Field of Blood Alarms and Discursions

Love, Marriage and The Sexes

Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all. - Heretics, 1905
A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage. - Chaucer
Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. - A Handful of Authors
The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. - David Copperfield, Chesterton on Dickens, 1911
A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what she is. - Robert Browning
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue. - Chesterton on Dickens
Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline. - Manalive
The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. - ILN 1/9/09
I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. - The Victorian Age in Literature

Religion and Faith

One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created. - The Boston Sunday Post, 1/16/21
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. - ILN, 7/16/10
If there were no God, there would be no atheists. - Where All Roads Lead, 1922
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. - ILN, 1/13/06
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. - Introduction to the Book of Job, 1907
It has been often said, very truely, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary. - Charles Dickens
Theology is only thought applied to religion. - The New Jerusalem
The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden. - ILN 1-3-20
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. - ILN 8-11-28
Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake. - Blake

Christmas

What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. - Christmas, All Things Considered
If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkeness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings. - George Bernard Shaw, Ch. 6
Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate. - The New Jerusalem, Ch. 5
The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings. - Christendom in Dublin, Ch.3
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. - On Christmas, Generally Speaking

Morality and Truth

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. - ILN, 10/23/09
It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them. - ILN, 3/14/08
There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth. - ILN, 7/18/08
The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice. - ILN, 6/11/10
Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it. - ILN, 2/24/06
Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks. - Daily News, 2/21/02
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. - The Catholic Church and Conversion
There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners. - The Father Brown Omnibus
All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them. - ILN 3/14/08
Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice. - ILN 9/11/09
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it. - ILN 8/4/06
To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea. - Heretics, CW I, p128
Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified. - ILN 9-30-33
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea. - T.P.'s Weekly, Christmas Number, 1910
All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive. - The Thing. CW. III 191
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. - What's Wrong With the World
If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty. - What's Wrong with the World
The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure. - Speech to Anglo-Catholic Congress 6-29-20
What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. - Daily News12-21-05
There are some desires that are not desirable. - Orthodoxy
In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. - The Speaker 2-2-01
Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. - The Church of the Servile State Utopia of Usurers
It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. - The Coloured Lands

Economic Theory and Distributism

Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business. - G.K.'s Weekly, 4/10/26
[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them. - The Debate with Bertrand Russell, BBC Magazine, 11/27/35
A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter. - ILN, 5/25/31
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. - The Uses of Diversity, 1921
Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing. - Reflections on a Rotten Apple, The Well and the Shallows, 1935
Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues. - The Thing
All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it. - Utopia of Usurers, 1917
From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy. - A Case In Point, The Outline of Sanity
Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be a usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. - What's Wrong with the World
There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions. - A Short History of England
[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants. - How to Write a Detective Story. The Spice of Life
Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property. - Commonwealth10-12-32
The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work. - NY Sun 11-3-18
Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work. - Hudge and Gudge, What's Wrong with the World
You can't have the family farm without the family. - Tales of the Long Bow
I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. - What's Wrong World

Art and Literature

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. - ILN, 5/5/28
The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. - Shaw, 1909
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. - Chapter 16, Heretics, 1905
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder. - ILN, 11/25/05
The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist. � ILN 9-18-09
By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. - On Detective Novels, Generally Speaking
And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads. - Charles Dickens
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. - Daily News.4-22-05

Past Words on Today's Dilemmas

Absentee Fathers
What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible. - The Everlasting Man, CW II, p.186
Back To Nature
Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home. - Chesterton Review, August, 1993
Bigotry
Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. - Lunacy and Letters
Capital Punishment
For my part, I would have no executions except by the mob; or, at least, by the people acting quite exceptionally. I would make capital punishment impossible except by act of attainder. Then there would be some chance of a few of our real oppressors getting hanged. - ILN, 2/13/09
Condom Distribution
Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia. - GK's Weekly, 1/17/31
Credibility of the Media
Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers. - ILN, 4/7/23
The Cult of Fame
America has a genius for the encouragement of fame. - The Father Brown Omnibus
The Education System

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. - ILN, 9/7/29
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads. - Nash�s Pall Mall Magazine. April, 1935

Heaven's Gate (Cults)

How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? - Orthodoxy
From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end. - ILN, 9/24/27

A Litigious Society
The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end. - ILN, 3/24/23
The O.J. Trial

Scientific Evidence: The ultimate effect of the great science of Fingerprints is this: that whereas a gentleman was expected to put on gloves to dance with a lady, he may now be expected to put on gloves in order to strangle her. - Avowals and Denials, 1935
The Verdict: Only poor men get hanged. - ILN, 7/17/09

Police Authority
Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. - What I Saw In America, 1922
Psychoanlysis
Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are. - ILN, 6/23/28
Reproductive Rights
Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like. - Babies and Distributism, GK's Weekly, 11/12/32
Separation of Church and State
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it. - Autobiography, 1937
Urban Renewal
Some people leave money for the improvement of public buildings. I can leave dynamite for the improvement of public buildings. � ILN 3-17-06
Vegetarianism
A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet. - William blake
Z.Z. Top
You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion. - How I Met the President Tremendous Trifles

Random Wisdom

My country, right or wrong, is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, My mother, drunk or sober.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
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.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.

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