Quotations - Modernity
"We are learning to do a great many clever things...The next great task will be to learn not to do them.- G.K. Chesterton, "Queen Victoria" Varied Types "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man, 1925
"Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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 possibly be alive." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News 7-21-06
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, "The New House" Alarms and Discursions
"This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 12/20/19
"The past is not what it was." - G.K. Chesterton, A Short History of England
"There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
"There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 10-15-21
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, William Blake
“There are two kinds of peacemakers in the modern world; and they are both, though in various ways, a nuisance. The first peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that he agrees with everybody. He confuses everybody. The second peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that everybody agrees with him. He enrages everybody. Between the two of them they produce a hundred times more disputes and distractions than we poor pugnacious people would ever have thought of in our lives." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3-3-06
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, Chesterton Review, August, 1993
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Way to the Stars" Lunacy and Letters
"Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9-11-09
"A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education." - G.K. Chesterton, "A Grammar of Shelley" A Handful of Authors
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Moral Philosophy of Meredith" A Handful of Authors
"It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship." - G.K. Chesterton, "The New Hypocrite" What's Wrong with the World
"A queer and almost mad notion seems to have got into the modern head that, if you mix up everybody and everything more or less anyhow, the mixture may be called unity, and the unity may be called peace. It is supposed that, if you break down all doors and walls so that there is no domesticity, there will then be nothing but friendship. Surely somebody must have noticed by this time that the men living in a hotel quarrel at least as often as the men living in a street." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN September 8, 1917
"These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN June 4, 1921
"Moderns have not the moral courage, as a rule, to avow the sincere spiritual bias behind their fads; they become insincere even about their sincerity. Most modern liberality consists of finding irreligious excuses for religious bigotry. The earlier type of bigot pretended to be more religious than he really was. The later type pretends to be less religious than he really is. He does not wear a mask of piety, but rather a mask of impiety - or, at any rate, of indifference." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 12-27-19
"A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind." - G.K. Chesterton, William Blake
"Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, 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 possibly be alive." - G.K. Chesterton, 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." - G.K. Chesterton, Daily News 7-21-06
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, "The New House" Alarms and Discursions
"This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 12/20/19
"The past is not what it was." - G.K. Chesterton, A Short History of England
"There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past." - G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
"There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 10-15-21
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, William Blake
“There are two kinds of peacemakers in the modern world; and they are both, though in various ways, a nuisance. The first peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that he agrees with everybody. He confuses everybody. The second peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that everybody agrees with him. He enrages everybody. Between the two of them they produce a hundred times more disputes and distractions than we poor pugnacious people would ever have thought of in our lives." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 3-3-06
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, Chesterton Review, August, 1993
"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." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Way to the Stars" Lunacy and Letters
"Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 9-11-09
"A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education." - G.K. Chesterton, "A Grammar of Shelley" A Handful of Authors
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Moral Philosophy of Meredith" A Handful of Authors
"It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship." - G.K. Chesterton, "The New Hypocrite" What's Wrong with the World
"A queer and almost mad notion seems to have got into the modern head that, if you mix up everybody and everything more or less anyhow, the mixture may be called unity, and the unity may be called peace. It is supposed that, if you break down all doors and walls so that there is no domesticity, there will then be nothing but friendship. Surely somebody must have noticed by this time that the men living in a hotel quarrel at least as often as the men living in a street." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN September 8, 1917
"These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN June 4, 1921
"Moderns have not the moral courage, as a rule, to avow the sincere spiritual bias behind their fads; they become insincere even about their sincerity. Most modern liberality consists of finding irreligious excuses for religious bigotry. The earlier type of bigot pretended to be more religious than he really was. The later type pretends to be less religious than he really is. He does not wear a mask of piety, but rather a mask of impiety - or, at any rate, of indifference." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 12-27-19
"A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind." - G.K. Chesterton, William Blake
Labels: 2006, Quotations
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