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But Whenever One Meets Modern Thinkers (as One Often Does) Progressing Toward A Madhouse, One Always Finds, On Inquiry, That They Have Just Had A Splendid Escape From Another Madhouse. Thus, Hundreds Of People Become Socialists, Not Because They Have Tried Socialism And Found It Nice, But Because They Have Tried Individualism And Found It Particularly Nasty.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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But Whenever One Meets

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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But Whenever One Meets Modern Thinkers (as One Often Does) Progressing Toward A Madhouse, One Always Finds, On Inquiry, That They Have Just Had A Splendid Escape From Another Madhouse. Thus, Hundreds Of People Become Socialists, Not Because They Have Tried Socialism And Found It Nice, But Because They Have Tried Individualism And Found It Particularly Nasty.

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Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

He Walked By Instinct Along One White Road, On Which Early Birds Hopped And Sang, And Found Himself Outside A Fenced Garden. There He Saw The Sister Of Gregory, The Girl With The Gold-red Hair, Cutting Lilac Before Breakfast, With The Great Unconscious Gravity Of A Girl.

What The World Wants, What The World Is Waiting For, Is Not Modern Poetry Or Classical Poetry Or Neo-classical Poetry - But Good Poetry. And The Dreadful Disreputable Doubt, Which Stirs In My Own Skeptical Mind, Is Doubt About Whether It Would Really Matter Much What Style A Poet Chose To Write In, In Any Period, As Long As He Wrote Good Poetry.

None Of The Modern Machines, None Of The Modern Paraphernalia. . . Have Any Power Except Over The People Who Choose To Use Them.

When We Look Upon Lives So Human And Yet So Small, We Feel As If We Ourselves Were Enlarged To An Embarrassing Bigness Of Stature. We Feel The Same Kind Of Obligation To These Creatures That A Deity Might Feel If He Had Created Something That He Could Not Understand.

All Democrats Object To Men Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Birth; Tradition Objects To Their Being Disqualified By The Accident Of Death.

It Isn't That They Can't See The Solution. It's That They Can't See The Problem. They Can't See The Problem If They Are Looking In The Wrong Place. They Can't See The Problem If They Have Blinders On - For 'none Are So Blind As Those That Will Not See'.

We Should Always Endeavor To Wonder At The Permanent Thing, Not At The Mere Exception. We Should Be Startled By The Sun, And Not By The Eclipse. We Should Wonder Less At The Earthquake, And Wonder More At The Earth.

If There Is One Thing Worse Than The Modern Weakening Of Major Morals, It Is The Modern Strengthening Of Minor Morals.

Every Time A Man Knocks On A Brothel Door, He Is Really Knocking For God

Jesus Promised His Disciples Three Things—that They Would Be Completely Fearless, Absurdly Happy, And In Constant Trouble.

Even A Bad Shot Is Dignified When He Accepts A Duel.

There Is More Simplicity In The Man Who Eats Caviar On Impulse Than In The Man Who Eats Grape-nuts On Principle.

I Always Like A Dog So Long As He Isn't Spelled Backward.

On The Third Day The Friends Of Christ Coming At Daybreak To The Place Found The Grave Empty And The Stone Rolled Away. In Varying Ways They Realized The New Wonder; But Even They Hardly Realized That The World Had Died In The Night. What They Were Looking At Was The First Day Of A New Creation, With A New Heaven And A New Earth; And In A Semblance Of The Gardener God Walked Again In The Garden, In The Cool Not Of The Evening But Of The Dawn.

The Whole Truth Is Generally The Ally Of Virtue; A Half-truth Is Always The Ally Of Some Vice.

The Atheist Is Not Interested In Anything Except Attacks On Atheism.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning. An Art School Is A Place Where About Three People Work With Feverish Energy And Everybody Else Idles To A Degree That I Should Have Conceived Unattainable By Human Nature.

Atheism Is Indeed The Most Daring Of All Dogmas . . . For It Is The Assertion Of A Universal Negative.

Art Consists Of Limitation. The Most Beautiful Part Of Every Picture Is The Frame.

Experience Which Was Once Claimed By The Aged Is Now Claimed Exclusively By The Young.

Not Only Is Suicide A Sin, It Is The Sin. It Is The Ultimate And Absolute Evil, The Refusal To Take An Interest In Existence; The Refusal To Take The Oath Of Loyalty To Life. The Man Who Kills A Man, Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself, Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned He Wipes Out The World.

How Quickly Revolutions Grow Old; And, Worse Still, Respectable.

Modern Science Is Necessarily A Double-edged Tool, A Tool That Cuts Both Ways. ... There Is No Doubt That A Zeppelin Is A Wonderful Thing; But That Did Not Prevent It From Becoming A Horrible Thing.

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers. In The Perfect Stranger We Perceive Man Himself; The Image Of A God Is Not Disguised By Resemblances To An Uncle Or Doubts Of Wisdom Of A Mustache.

If Our Caricaturists Do Not Hate Their Enemies, It Is Not Because They Are Too Big To Hate Them, But Because Their Enemies Are Not Big Enough To Hate.

People Talk Of The Pathos And Failure Of Plain Women; But It Is A More Terrible Thing That A Beautiful Woman May Succeed In Everything But Womanhood.

The Original Quality In Any Man Of Imagination Is Imagery.

Who Would Condescend To Strike Down The Mere Things That He Does Not Fear? Who Would Debase Himself To Be Merely Brave, Like Any Common Prizefighter? Who Would Stoop To Be Fearless--like A Tree? Fight The Thing That You Fear. You Remember The Old Tale Of The English Clergyman Who Gave The Last Rites To The Brigand Of Sicily, And How On His Death-bed The Great Robber Said, 'i Can Give You No Money, But I Can Give You Advice For A Lifetime: Your Thumb On The Blade, And Strike Upwards.' So I Say To You, Strike Upwards, If You Strike At The Stars.

The Point Is Not That This World Is Too Sad To Love Or Too Glad Not To Love; The Point Is That When You Do Love A Thing, Its Gladness Is A Reason For Loving It, And Its Sadness A Reason For Loving It More.

We Should Thank God For Beer And Burgundy By Not Drinking Too Much Of Them.

Progress Is Providence Without God. That Is, It Is A Theory That Everything Has Always Perpetually Gone Right By Accident. It Is A Sort Of Atheistic Optimism, Based On An Everlasting Coincidence Far More Miraculous Than A Miracle.

Men Can Construct A Science With Very Few Instruments, Or With Very Plain Instruments; But No One On Earth Could Construct A Science With Unreliable Instruments. A Man Might Work Out The Whole Of Mathematics With A Handful Of Pebbles, But Not With A Handful Of Clay Which Was Always Falling Apart Into New Fragments, And Falling Together Into New Combinations. A Man Might Measure Heaven And Earth With A Reed, But Not With A Growing Reed.

Why Are We Not Grateful To God For Filling Our Stockings With Legs?

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.

Marriage Is An Adventure, Like Going To War.

The World Will Never Starve For Want Of Wonders; But Only For Want Of Wonder.

Once Remove The Old Arena Of Theological Quarrels, And You Will Throw Open The Whole World To The Most Horrible, The Most Hopeless, The Most Endless, The Most Truly Interminable Quarrels; The Untheological Quarrels.

Wit Is A Sword; It Is Meant To Make People Feel The Point As Well As See It.

It Is Assumed That The Skeptic Has No Bias; Whereas He Has A Very Obvious Bias In Favour Of Skepticism.

Most Americans ... Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne.

The Old Assumption Of The Approximate Impossibility Of War Really Rested On A Similar Assumption About The Impossibility Of Evil-and Especially Of Evil In High Places.

The Party System Was Founded On One National Notion Of Fair Play. It Was The Notion That Folly And Futility Should Be Fairly Divided Between Both Sides.

At Least Five Times, With The Arian And The Albigensian, With The Humanist Skeptic, After Voltaire And After Darwin, The Christian Faith Has To All Appearance, Gone To The Dogs? But, In Each Of These Five Cases, It Was The Dog That Died.

Surely We Cannot Take An Open Question Like The Supernatural And Shut It With A Bang, Turning The Key Of The Madhouse On All The Mystics Of History. You Cannot Take The Region Of The Unknown And Calmly Say That, Though You Know Nothing About It, You Know All The Gates Are Locked. We Do Not Know Enough About The Unknown To Know That It Is Unknowable.

Customs Are Generally Unselfish. Habits Are Nearly Always Selfish.

Faith Is Always At A Disadvantage; It Is A Perpetually Defeated Thing Which Survives All Conquerors.

I Do Not Know Much About Mohammed Or Mohammedanism. I Do Not Take The Koran To Bed With Me Every Night. But, If I Did On Some One Particular Night, There Is One Sense At Least In Which I Know What I Should Not Find There. I Apprehend That I Should Not Find The Work Abounding In Strong Encouragements To The Worship Of Idols; That The Praises Of Polytheism Would Not Be Loudly Sung; That The Character Of Mohammed Would Not Be Subjected To Anything Resembling Hatred And Derision; And That The Great Modern Doctrine Of The Unimportance Of Religion Would Not Be Needlessly Emphasised.

Adventure Is The Champagne Of Life, But I Prefer My Champagne And My Adventures Dry.

It Is Because Artists Do Not Practise, Patrons Do Not Patronize, Crowds Do Not Assemble To Reverently Worship The Great Work Of Doing Nothing, That The World Has Lost Its Philosophy And Even Failed To Invent A New Religion.

Science Only Means Knowledge; And For [greek] Ancients It Did Only Mean Knowledge. Thus The Favorite Science Of The Greeks Was Astronomy, Because It Was As Abstract As Algebra. ... We May Say That The Great Greek Ideal Was To Have No Use For Useful Things. The Slave Was He Who Learned Useful Things; The Freeman Was He Who Learned Useless Things. This Still Remains The Ideal Of Many Noble Men Of Science, In The Sense They Do Desire Truth As The Great Greeks Desired It; And Their Attitude Is An External Protest Against Vulgarity Of Utilitarianism.

A Madman Is Not Someone Who Has Lost His Reason But Someone Who Has Lost Everything But His Reason

Lost Everything

When People Begin To Ignore Human Dignity, It Will Not Be Long Before They Begin To Ignore Human Rights.

If Christianity Should Happen To Be True - That Is To Say, If Its God Is The Real God Of The Universe - Then Defending It May Mean Talking About Anything And Everything.

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.

I May Not Practice What I Preach But God Forbid I Should Preach What I Practice

I Believe In Preaching To The Converted; For I Have Generally Found That The Converted Do Not Understand Their Own Religion.

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.

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.

A Good Civilisation Spreads Over Us Freely Like A Tree, Varying And Yielding Because It Is Alive. A Bad Civilisation Stands Up And Sticks Out Above Us Like An Umbrella-artificial, Mathematical In Shape; Not Merely Universal, But Uniform.

Christianity Satisfies Suddenly And Perfectly Man's Ancestral Instinct For Being The Right Way Up; Satisfies It Supremely In This, That By Its Creed Joy Becomes Something Gigantic, And Sadness Something Special And Small.

Every One On The Earth Should Believe That He Has Something To Give To The World Which Cannot Otherwise Be Given.

You Cannot Love A Thing Without Wanting To Fight For It.

I Came To The Conclusion That The Optimist Thought Everything Good Except The Pessimist, And That The Pessimist Thought Everything Bad, Except Himself.

You'll Never Find The Solution If You Don't See The Problem.

No Man's Really Any Good Till He Knows How Bad He Is, Or Might Be.

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.

Why Should Anything Go Right; Even Observation And Deduction? Why Should Not Good Logic Be As Misleading As Bad Logic? They Are Both Movements In The Brain Of A Bewildered Ape?

The Materialist Theory Of History, That All Politics And Ethics Are The Expression Of Economics, Is A Very Simple Fallacy Indeed. It Consists Simply Of Confusing The Necessary Conditions Of Life With The Normal Preoccupations Of Life, That Are Quite A Different Thing.

Family Is The Theatre Of The Spiritual Drama, The Place Where Things Happen, Especially The Things That Matter.

Only Poor Men Get Hanged.

If There Were No God, There Would Be No Atheists.

Christian Inspirational

The Criminal Is The Creative Artist; The Detective Only The Critic.

The Sincere Love Of Books Has Nothing To Do With Cleverness Or Stupidity Any More Than Any Other Sincere Love. It Is A Quality Of Character, A Freshness, A Power Of Pleasure, A Power Of Faith. A Silly Person May Delight In Reading Masterpieces Just As A Silly Person May Delight In Picking Flowers. A Fool May Be In Love With A Poet As He May Be In Love With A Woman.

In Truth, There Are Only Two Kinds Of People; Those Who Accept Dogma And Know It, And Those Who Accept Dogma And Don't Know It.

When Learned Men Begin To Use Their Reason, Then I Generally Discover That They Haven't Got Any.

What Affects Men Sharply About A Foreign Nation Is Not So Much Finding Or Not Finding Familiar Things; It Is Rather Not Finding Them In The Familiar Place.

The Object Of A New Year Is Not That We Should Have A New Year, But Rather That We Should Have A New Soul.

The Devil's Walking Parody; On All Four-footed Things.

Madness Does Not Come By Breaking Out, But By Giving In; By Settling Down In Some Dirty, Little, Self-repeating Circle Of Ideas; By Being Tamed.

The Reformer Is Always Right About What's Wrong. However, He's Often Wrong About What Is Right.

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 Looks Just A Little More Mathematical And Regular Than It Is; Its Exactitude Is Obvious, But Its Inexactitude Is Hidden; Its Wilderness Lies In Wait.

An Enormous Amount Of Modern Ingenuity Is Expended On Finding Defences For The Indefensible Conduct Of The Powerful. As I Have Said Above, These Defences Generally Exhibit Themselves Most Emphatically In The Form Of Appeals To Physical Science. And Of All The Forms In Which Science, Or Pseudo-science, Has Come To The Rescue Of The Rich And Stupid, There Is None So Singular As The Singular Invention Of The Theory Of Races.

The Man Who Kills A Man Kills A Man. The Man Who Kills Himself Kills All Men. As Far As He Is Concerned, He Wipes Out The World.

[consider] A Fence Or Gate Erected Across A Road] The More Modern Type Of Reformer Goes Gaily Up To It And Says, "i Don't See The Use Of This; Let Us Clear It Away." To Which The More Intelligent Type Of Reformer Will Do Well To Answer: "if You Don't See The Use Of It, I Certainly Won't Let You Clear It Away. Go Away And Think. Then, When You Can Come Back And Tell Me That You Do See The Use Of It, I May Allow You To Destroy It."

The More I Considered Christianity, The More I Found That While It Had Established A Rule And Order, The Chief Aim Of That Order Was To Give Room For Good Things To Run Wild.

Poetry Is Sane Because It Floats Easily In An Infinite Sea; Reason Seeks To Cross The Infinite Sea And So Make It Finite. The Result Is Mental Exhaustion. To Accept Everything Is An Exercise, To Understand Everything A Strain.

If We Desire European Civilization To Be A Raid And A Rescue, We Shall Insist Rather That Souls Are In Real Peril Than That Their Peril Is Ultimately Unreal. And If We Wish To Exalt The Outcast And The Crucified, We Shall Rather Wish To Think That A Veritable God Was Crucified, Rather Than A Mere Sage Or Hero. Above All, If We Wish To Protect The Poor We Shall Be In Favour Of Fixed Rules And Clear Dogmas. The Rules Of A Club Are Occasionally In Favour Of The Poor Member. The Drift Of A Club Is Always In Favour Of The Rich One.

The Grinding Power Of The Plain Words Of The Gospel Story Is Like The Power Of Mill-stones, And Those Who Can Read Them Simply Enough Will Feel As If Rocks Had Been Rolled Upon Them.

I Am Not Absentminded. It Is The Presence Of Mind That Makes Me Unaware Of Everything Else.

Presence Of Mind

Literature And Fiction Are Two Entirely Different Things. Literature Is A Luxury; Fiction Is A Necessity.

Classic Literature Is Still Something That Hangs In The Air Like A Song.

The Human Race Is Always Trying This Dodge Of Making Everything Entirely Easy; But The Difficulty Which It Shifts Off One Thing It Shifts To Another.

These Are The Days When The Christian Is Expected To Praise Every Creed Except His Own.

Saint George He Was For England, And Before He Killed The Dragon He Drank A Pint Of English Ale Out Of An English Flagon.

Americans Are A Very Backward People, With All The Real Virtues Of A Backward People; The Patriarchal Simplicity And Human Dignity Of A Democracy, And A Respect For Labor Uncorrupted By Cynicism.

It Is Always The Secure Who Are Humble.

The People Has No Definite Disbelief In The Temples Of Theology. The People Has A Very Fiery And Practical Disbelief In The Temples Of Physical Science.

What People Call Impartiality May Simply Mean Indifference, And What People Call Partiality May Simply Mean Mental Activity.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

The Whole Pleasure Of Marriage Is That It Is A Perpetual Crisis.

When A Person Has Found Something Which He Prefers To Life Itself, He For The First Time Has Begun To Live.

Marriage Is A Duel To The Death Which No Man Of Honour Should Decline.

I Am A Journalist And Have No Earthly Motives Except Curiosity And Personal Vanity.

I Suppose Every One Must Have Reflected How Primeval And How Poetical Are The Things That One Carries In One's Pocket; The Pocket-knife, For Instance, The Type Of All Human Tools, The Infant Of The Sword. Once I Planned To Write A Book Of Poems Entirely About Things In My Pockets. But I Found It Would Be Too Long; And The Age Of The Great Epics Is Past.

If A Thing Is Worth Doing, It Is Worth Doing Badly.

Nobody Understands The Nature Of The Church, Or The Ringing Note Of The Creed Descending From Antiquity, Who Does Not Realize That The Whole World Once Very Nearly Died Of Broadmindedness And The Brotherhood Of All Religions.

When Fishes Flew And Forests Walked And Figs Grew Upon Thorn, Some Moment When The Moon Was Blood Then Surely I Was Born. With Monstrous Head And Sickening Cry And Ears Like Errant Wings, The Devil's Walking Parody On All Four-footed Things.

A Man Looking At A Hippopotamus May Sometimes Be Tempted To Regard A Hippopotamus As An Enormous Mistake; But He Is Also Bound To Confess That A Fortunate Inferiority Prevents Him Personally From Making Such Mistakes.

He Has Come To The Most Dreadful Conclusion A Literary Man Can Come To, The Conclusion That The Ordinary View Is The Right One. It Is Only The Last And Wildest Kind Of Courage That Can Stand On A Tower Before Ten Thousand People And Tell Them That Twice Two Is Four.

The Comedy Of Man Survives The Tragedy Of Man.

For Scotland Has A Double Dose Of The Poison Called Heredity; The Sense Of Blood In The Aristocrat, The Sense Of Doom In The Calvinist.

The New Community Which The Capitalists Are Now Constructing Will Be A Very Complete And Absolute Community; And One Which Will Tolerate Nothing Really Independent Of Itself.

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.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Exactly Reversed.

Were Meant To Be

The Whole Modern World Has Divided Itself Into Conservatives And Progressives. The Business Of Progressives Is To Go On Making Mistakes. The Business Of Conservatives Is To Prevent Mistakes From Being Corrected.

The Function Of The Imagination Is Not To Make Strange Things Settled, So Much As To Make Settled Things Strange.

The Disadvantage Of Men Not Knowing The Past Is That They Do Not Know The Present. History Is A Hill Or High Point Of Vantage, From Which Alone Men See The Town In Which They Live Or The Age In Which They Are Living.

Liberty Has Produced Scepticism, And Scepticism Has Destroyed Liberty. The Lovers Of Liberty Thought They Were Leaving It Unlimited, When They Were Only Leaving It Undefined. They Thought They Were Only Leaving It Undefined, When They Were Really Leaving It Undefended.

Busy Editors Cannot Be Expected To Put On Their Posters, "mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," Or "mr. Jones, Of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They Cannot Announce The Happiness Of Mankind At All. They Cannot Describe All The Forks That Are Not Stolen, Or All The Marriages That Are Not Judiciously Dissolved. Hence The Complex Picture They Give Of Life Is Of Necessity Fallacious; They Can Only Represent What Is Unusual.

Romance Is The Deepest Thing In Life. It Is Deeper Than Reality.

The Aim Of Life Is Appreciation; There Is No Sense In Not Appreciating Things; And There Is No Sense In Having More Of Them If You Have Less Appreciation Of Them.

A Feminist Is Someone Who Loathes Being A Woman And Who Dislikes The Chief Feminine Characteristics.

Playing As Children Means Playing Is The Most Serious Thing In The World.

Ritual Will Always Mean Throwing Away Something: Destroying Our Corn Or Wine Upon The Altar Of Our Gods.

Life Is Indeed Terribly Complicated—to A Man Who Has Lost His Principles.

Joy, Which Was The Small Publicity Of The Pagan, Is The Gigantic Secret Of The Christian.

Feminists Are Those Who Cannot Stand Female Characteristics.

Characteristics

The Timidity Of The Child Or The Savage Is Entirely Reasonable; They Are Alarmed At This World, Because This World Is A Very Alarming Place. They Dislike Being Alone Because It Is Verily And Indeed An Awful Idea To Be Alone. Barbarians Fear The Unknown For The Same Reason That Agnostics Worship It - Because It Is A Fact.

The One Created Thing Which We Cannot Look At Is The One Thing In The Light Of Which We Look At Everything.

Liberty Is The Very Last Idea That Seems To Occur To Anybody, In Considering Any Political Or Social Proposal. It Is Only Necessary For Anybody For Any Reason To Allege Any Evidence Of Any Evil In Any Human Practice, For People Instantly To Suggest That The Practice Should Be Suppressed By The Police.

It Is Generally The Man Who Is Not Ready To Argue, Who Is Ready To Sneer.

I Am Myself So Exceedingly Nordic, As Far As Physical Constitution Is Concerned, That I Can Enjoy Almost Any Weather Except What Is Called Glorious Weather. At The End Of A Few Days, I Am Left Wondering How The Men Of The Mediterranean Ever Managed To Do Almost All The Most Active And Astonishing Things That Have Been Done.

We Have Passed The Age Of The Demagogue, The Man Who Has Little To Say And Says It Loud. We Have Come To The Age Of The Mystagogue Or Don, The Man Who Has Nothing To Say, But Says It Softly And Impressively In An Indistinct Whisper.

I Need Not Pause To Explain That Crime Is Not A Disease. It Is Criminology That Is A Disease.

If A Man Says That He Is Jesus Christ, It Is No Answer To Tell Him That The World Denies His Divinity; For The World Denied Christ's.

Tradition Does Not Mean A Dead Town; It Does Not Mean That The Living Are Dead But That The Dead Are Alive. It Means That It Still Matters What Penn Did Two Hundred Years Ago Or What Franklin Did A Hundred Years Ago; I Never Could Feel In New York That It Mattered What Anybody Did An Hour Ago.

Even In An Empire Of Atheists The Dead Man Is Always Sacred.

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.

Though I Believe In Liberalism, I Find It Difficult To Believe In Liberals.

Ten Thousand Women Marched Through The Streets Shouting, 'we Will Not Be Dictated To,' And Went Off And Became Stenographers.

Comradeship Is Quite A Different Thing From Friendship. . .

Different Things

Every Great Literature Has Always Been Allegorical - Allegorical Of Some View Of The Whole Universe. The 'iliad' Is Only Great Because All Life Is A Battle, The 'odyssey' Because All Life Is A Journey, The Book Of Job Because All Life Is A Riddle.

No Man Can Break Any Of The Ten Commandments. He Can Only Break Himself Against Them.

The Great Saint May Be Said To Mix All His Thoughts With Thanks. All Goods Look Better When They Look Like Gifts.

The Real Trouble With This World Of Ours Is Not That It Is An Unreasonable One. The Trouble Is That It Is Nearly Reasonable, But Not Quite.

The Whole Order Of Things Is As Outrageous As Any Miracle Which Could Presume To Violate It.

When People Impute Special Vices To The Christian Church, They Seem Entirely To Forget That The World (which Is The Only Other Thing There Is) Has These Vices Much More. The Church Has Been Cruel; But The World Has Been Much More Cruel. The Church Has Plotted; But The World Has Plotted Much More. The Church Has Been Superstitious; But It Has Never Been So Superstitious As The World Is When Left To Itself.

At The Back Of Our Brains Is A Blaze Of Astonishment At Our Own Existence. The Object Of The Artistic And Spiritual Life Is To Dig For This Sunrise Of Wonder.

Never Invoke The Gods Unless You Really Want Them To Appear. It Annoys Them Very Much.

The Main Point Of Christianity Was This: That Nature Is Not Our Mother: Nature Is Our Sister.

We Do Not Want, As The Newspapers Say, A Church That Will Move With The World. We Want A Church That Will Move The World.

When The Chord Of Monotony Is Stretched To Its Tightest, It Breaks With The Sound Of A Song.

A Catholic Is A Person Who Has Plucked Up Courage To Face The Incredible And Inconceivable Idea That Something Else May Be Wiser Than He Is.

Even The Moon Is Only Poetical Because There Is A Man In The Moon.

Man In The Moon

The Whole Point Of The Eugenic Pseudo-scientific Theories Is That They Are To Be Applied Wholesale, By Some More Sweeping And Generalizing Money Power Than The Individual Husband Or Wife Or Household. Eugenics Asserts That All Men Must Be So Stupid That They Cannot Manage Their Own Affairs; And Also So Clever That They Can Manage Each Other's.

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.

Even In A Minute Instance, It Is Best To Look First To The Main Tendencies Of Nature. A Particular Flower May Not Be Dead In Early Winter, But The Flowers Are Dying; A Particular Pebble May Never Be Wetted With The Tide, But The Tide Is Coming In. To The Scientific Eye All Human History Is A Series Of Collective Movements, Destructions Or Migrations, Like The Massacre Of Flies In Winter Or The Return Of Birds In Spring.

Suppose, My Dear Chadd, Suppose It Is We Who Are The Idiots Because We Are Not Afraid Of Devils In The Dark?

There Is No Better Test Of A Man's Ultimate Chivalry And Integrity Than How He Behaves When He Is Wrong... A Stiff Apology Is A Second Insult.

We Are Learning To Do A Great Many Clever Things. The Next Great Task Will Be To Learn Not To Do Them.

. . . For Friendship Implies Individuality; Whereas Comradeship Really Implies The Temporary Subordination, If Not The Temporary Swamping Of Individuality. Friends Are The Better For Being Two; But Comrades Are The Better For Being Two Million.

I've Been To Every Park In Every City And Not Seen A Statue To A Committee.

Boyhood Is A Most Complex And Incomprehensible Thing. Even When One Has Been Through It, One Does Not Understand What It Was. A Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been The Boy.

A Large Section Of The Intelligentsia Seems Wholly Devoid Of Intelligence.

A Really Great Person Is The Person Who Makes Every Person Feel Great.

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.

Every Work Of Art Has One Indispensable Mark ... The Center Of It Is Simple, However Much The Fulfillment May Be Complicated.

If Men Will Not Be Governed By The Ten Commandments, They Shall Be Governed By The Ten Thousand Commandments

The Great Gaels Of Ireland Are The Men That God Made Mad, For All Their Wars Are Merry, And All Their Songs Are Sad.

The Great Misfortune Of The Modern English Is Not At All That They Are More Boastful Than Other People (they Are Not); It Is That They Are Boastful About Those Particular Things Which Nobody Can Boast Of Without Losing Them.

Your Offer," He Said, "is Far Too Idiotic To Be Declined.

Around Every Corner Is Another Gift Waiting To Surprise Us, And It Will Surprise Us If We Can Achieve Control Over Our Natural Tendencies To Make Comparisons [to Things That Are Better Rather Than Things That Are Worse], To Take Things For Granted [rather Than Imagining How Much Worse Things Would Be If They Weren't There And So Feeling Grateful], And To Feel Entitled!

If The Devil Tells You Something Is Too Fearful To Look At, Look At It. If He Says Something Is Too Terrible To Hear, Hear It. If You Think Some Truth Unbearable, Bear It.

We Make Our Friends; We Make Our Enemies; But God Makes Our Next Door Neighbour.

Angels Can Fly Because They Take Themselves Lightly.

The Outer Ring Of Christianity Is A Rigid Guard Of Ethical Abnegations And Professional Priests; But Inside That Inhuman Guard You Will Find The Old Human Life Dancing Like Children And Drinking Wine Like Men; For Christianity Is The Only Frame For Pagan Freedom. But In The Modern Philosophy The Case Is Opposite; It Is Its Outer Ring That Is Obviously Artistic And Emancipated; Its Despair Is Within.

It Has Been Often Said, Very Truly, 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.

I Will Go Forth As A Real Outlaw," He Said, "and As Men Do Robbery On The Highway I Will Do Right On The Highway; And It Will Be Counted A Wilder Crime.

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.

A Change Of Opinions Is Almost Unknown In An Elderly Military Man.

Shall I Tell You The Secret Of The Whole World? It Is That We Have Only Known The Back Of The World. We See Everything From Behind, And It Looks Brutal. That Is Not A Tree, But The Back Of A Tree. That Is Not A Cloud, But The Back Of A Cloud. Cannot You See That Everything Is Stooping And Hiding A Face? If We Could Only Get Round In Front--

True Contentment Is A Thing As Active As Agriculture. It Is The Power Of Getting Out Of Any Situation All That There Is In It. It Is Arduous And It Is Rare.

He Is A [sane] Man Who Can Have Tragedy In His Heart And Comedy In His Head.

Research Is The Search Of People Who Don't Know What They Want.

A Man Running After A Hat Is Not Half So Ridiculous As A Man Running After A Woman.

There Is No Such Thing On Earth As An Uninteresting Subject; The Only Thing That Can Exist Is An Uninterested Person.

Artistic Temperament

The More Truly We Can See Life As A Fairytale, The More Clearly The Tale Resolves Itself Into War With The Dragon Who Is Wasting Fairyland.

Let Your Religion Be Less Of A Theory And More Of A Love Affair.

Gratitude, Being Nearly The Greatest Of Human Duties, Is Also Nearly The Most Difficult.

The Simple Sense Of Wonder At The Shapes Of Things, And At Their Exuberant Independence Of Our Intellectual Standards And Our Trivial Definitions, Is The Basis Of Spirituality.

He Had Found The Thing Which The Modern People Call Impressionism, Which Is Another Name For That Final Scepticism Which Can Find No Floor To The Universe.

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.

The Catholic Church Is Like A Thick Steak, A Glass Of Red Wine, And A Good Cigar.

America Has A New Delicacy, A Coarse, Rank Refinement.

Folk-lore Means That The Soul Is Sane, But That The Universe Is Wild And Full Of Marvels. Realism Means That The World Is Dull And Full Of Routine, But That The Soul Is Sick And Screaming. The Problem Of The Fairy Tale Is: What Will A Healthy Man Do With A Fantastic World? The Problems Of The Modern Novel Is: What Will A Madman Do With A Dull World? In The Fairy Tales The Cosmos Goes Mad; But The Hero Does Not Go Mad. In The Modern Novels The Hero Is Mad Before The Book Begins, And Suffers From The Harsh Steadiness And Cruel Sanity Of The Cosmos.

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.

...but This Is The Real Objection To That Torrent Of Modern Talk About Treating Crime As Disease, About Making Prison Merely A Hygienic Environment Like A Hospital, Of Healing Sin By Slow Scientific Methods. The Fallacy Of The Whole Thing Is That Evil Is A Matter Of Active Choice Whereas Disease Is Not.

And Pray Where In Earth Or Heaven Are There Prudent Marriages-might As Well Talk About Prudent Suicides.

A Great Curse Has Fallen Upon Modern Life With The Discovery Of The Vastness Of The Word Education.

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Gene Roddenberry

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