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Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

-Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Our Civilization Has Decided

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

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Vigorous Organisms Talk Not About Their Processes, But About Their Aims.

Laughter Has Something In It Common With The Ancient Words Of Faith And Inspiration; It Unfreezes Pride And Unwinds Secrecy; It Makes People Forget Themselves In The Presence Of Something Greater Than Themselves.

The Highest And Noblest Thing That History Can Be Is A Good Story.

Wait And See Whether The Religion Of The Servile State Is Not In Every Case What I Say: The Encouragement Of Small Virtues Supporting Capitalism, The Discouragement Of The Huge Virtues That Defy It.

A Man Cannot Have The Energy To Produce Good Art Without Having The Energy To Wish To Pass Beyond It.

No Man Must Be Superior To The Things That Are Common To Men.... Not Only Are We All In The Same Boat, But We Are All Seasick.

I Should Say That Psycho-analysis Was Confession Without Absolution.

It's Not The World That's Got So Much Worse But The News Coverage That's Got So Much Better.

There Is More To Life Than Increasing Its Speed. Gandhi Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth It? Richard Bach Life Exists For The Love Of Music Or Beautiful Things.

[there Is] One Distinctly Human Thing - The Story. There Can Be As Good Science About A Turnip As About A Man. ... [or Philosophy, Or Theology] ...there Can Be, Without Any Question At All, As Good Higher Mathematics About A Turnip As About A Man. But I Do Not Think, Though I Speak In A Manner Somewhat Tentative, That There Could Be As Good A Novel Written About A Turnip As A Man.

It Is Shorter To State The Things Forbidden Than The Things Permitted; Precisely Because Most Things Are Permitted And Only A Few Things Forbidden.

We Are All Ordinary People. And It's The Extraordinary People Who Know It.

You Cannot Grow A Beard In A Moment Of Passion.

To Desire Money Is Much Nobler Than To Desire Success. Desiring Money May Mean Desiring To Return To Your Country, Or Marry The Woman You Love, Or Ransom Your Father From Brigands. But Desiring Success Must Mean That You Take An Abstract Pleasure In The Unbrotherly Act Of Distancing And Disgracing Other Men.

People Who Make History Know Nothing About History. You Can See That In The Sort Of History They Make.

What Was Wonderful About Childhood Is That Anything In It Was A Wonder. It Was Not Merely A World Full Of Miracles; It Was A Miraculous World.

There Is Nothing Harder To Learn Than Painting And Nothing Which Most People Take Less Trouble About Learning.

A Child's Instinct Is Almost Perfect In The Matter Of Fighting. The Child's Hero Is Always The Man Or Boy Who Defends Himself Suddenly And Splendidly Against Aggression.

I Wish We Could Sometimes Love The Characters In Real Life As We Love The Characters In Romances. There Are A Great Many Human Souls Whom We Should Accept More Kindly, And Even Appreciate More Clearly, If We Simply Thought Of Them As People In A Story.

It Is Easy To Be Heavy: Hard To Be Light.

The Poets Have Been Mysteriously Silent On The Subject Of Cheese.

A Man Who Says That No Patriot Should Attack The Boer War Until It Is Over Is Not Worth Answering Intelligently; He Is Saying That No Good Son Should Warn His Mother Off A Cliff Until She Has Fallen Over It.

And When It Rains On Your Parade, Look Up Rather Than Down. Without The Rain, There Would Be No Rainbow.

A Man Cannot Be Wise Enough To Be A Great Artist Without Being Wise Enough To Wish To Be A Philosopher.

They Said That I Should Lose My Ideals And Begin To Believe In The Methods Of Practical Politicians. Now, I Have Not Lost My Ideals In The Least; My Faith In Fundamentals Is Exactly What It Always Was. What I Have Lost Is My Childlike Faith In Practical Politics.

I Am More Than A Devil; I Am A Man. I Can Do The One Thing Which Satan Himself Cannot Do— I Can Die.

The Objection To Fairy Stories Is That They Tell Children There Are Dragons. But Children Have Always Known There Are Dragons. Fairy Stories Tell Children That Dragons Can Be Killed.

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.

Without Authority There Is No Liberty. Freedom Is Doomed To Destruction At Every Turn, Unless There Is A Recognized Right To Freedom. And If There Are Rights, There Is An Authority To Which We Appeal For Them.

Every Man Is Important If He Loses His Life;and Every Man Is Funny If He Loses His Hat And Has To Run After It.

It Is Quite Easy To See Why A Legend Is Treated, And Ought To Be Treated, More Respectfully Than A Book Of History. The Legend Is Generally Made By The Majority Of People In The Village, Who Are Sane. The Book Is Generally Written By The One Man In The Village Who Is Mad.

Facts As Facts Do Not Always Create A Spirit Of Reality, Because Reality Is A Spirit.

With Every Step Of Our Lives We Enter Into The Middle Of Some Story Which We Are Certain To Misunderstand.

Art Is Limitation; The Essence Of Every Picture Is The Frame. If You Draw A Giraffe, You Must Draw Him With A Long Neck. If In Your Bold Creative Way You Hold Yourself Free To Draw A Giraffe With A Short Neck, You Will Really Find That You Are Not Free To Draw A Giraffe.

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 Man Can Never Quite Understand A Boy, Even When He Has Been A Boy.

The Strangest Whim Has Seized Me ... After All I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today.

People Seem To Fight About Things Very Unsuitable For Fighting. They Make A Frightful Noise In Support Of Very Quiet Things. They Knock Each Other About In The Name Of Very Fragile Things.

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

The Real Great Man Is The Man Who Makes Every Man Feel Great.

Men Do Not Differ Much About What Things They Will Call Evils; They Differ Enormously About What Evils They Will Call Excusable.

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.

Certain New Theologians Dispute Original Sin, Which Is The Only Part Of Christian Theology Which Can Really Be Proved.

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

Employers Will Give Time To Eat, Time To Sleep; They Are In Terror Of A Time To Think.

The Last Few Decades Have Been Marked By A Special Cultivation Of The Romance Of The Future. We Seem To Have Made Up Our Minds To Misunderstand What Has Happened; And We Turn, With A Sort Of Relief, To Stating What Will Happen-which Is Apparently Much Easier...the Modern Mind Is Forced Towards The Future By A Certain Sense Of Fatigue, Not Unmixed With Terror, With Which It Regards The Past.

Gluttony Is A Great Fault; But We Do Not Necessarily Dislike A Glutton. We Only Dislike The Glutton When He Becomes A Gourmet-that Is, We Only Dislike Him When He Not Only Wants The Best For Himself, But Knows What Is Best For Other People.

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

God Is Not A Symbol Of Goodness; Goodness Is A Symbol Of God

The Most Poetical Thing In The World Is Not Being Sick.

To Love Means Loving The Unlovable. To Forgive Means Pardoning The Unpardonable. Faith Means Believing The Unbelievable. Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

He Wondered Why The Pelican Was The Symbol Of Charity, Except It Was That It Wanted A Good Deal Of Charity To Admire A Pelican.

Only Friendliness Produces Friendship. And We Must Look Far Deeper Into The Soul Of Man For The Thing That Produces Friendliness.

While Once It Was The Rank And File That Cheered With All The Partisan Passions At Their Heights, Today It Is The Party Leaders Who Are Cheering Themselves; And All By Themselves. The Mob That Is Their Audience Is In One Vast Universal Trance, Thinking About Something Else.

Literary Men Are Being Employed To Praise A Big Business Man Personally, As Men Used To Praise A King. They Not Only Find Political Reasons For The Commercial Schemes That They Have Done For Some Time Past They Also Find Moral Defences For The Commercial Schemers... I Do Resent The Whole Age Of Patronage Being Revived Under Such Absurd Patrons; And All Poets Becoming Court Poets, Under Kings That Have Taken No Oath.

The Truth Is That There Are No Things For Which Men Will Make Such Herculean Efforts As The Things Of Which They Know They Are Unworthy.

It May Be A Mere Patriotic Bias, Though I Do Not Think So, But It Seems To Me That The English Aristocracy Is Not Only The Type, But Is The Crown And Flower Of All Actual Aristocracies; It Has All The Oligarchical Virtues As Well As All The Defects. It Is Casual, It Is Kind, It Is Courageous In Obvious Matters; But It Has One Great Merit That Overlaps Even These. The Great And Very Obvious Merit Of The English Aristocracy Is That Nobody Could Possibly Take It Seriously.

Every Politician Is Emphatically A Promising Politician.

The Modern World Is Full Of The Old Christian Virtues Gone Mad. The Virtues Have Gone Mad Because They Have Been Isolated From Each Other And Are Wandering Alone. Thus Some Scientists Care For Truth; And Their Truth Is Pitiless. Thus Some Humanitarians Only Care For Pity; And Their Pity (i Am Sorry To Say) Is Often Untruthful.

A Strange Fanaticism Fills Our Time: The Fanatical Hatred Of Morality, Especially Of Christian Morality.

The Greatest Political Storm Flutters Only A Fringe Of Humanity. But An Ordinary Man And An Ordinary Woman And Their Ordinary Children Literally Alter The Destiny Of Nations.

It May Not Be Automatic Necessity That Makes All Daisies Alike; It May Be That God Makes Every Daisy Separately, But Has Never Gotten Tired Of Making Them

Wherever There Is Animal Worship, There Is Human Sacrifice.

This Is, First And Last, The Real Value Of Christmas; In So Far As The Mythology Remains At All It Is A Kind Of Happy Mythology. Personally, Of Course, I Believe In Santa Claus; But It Is The Season Of Forgiveness, And I Will Forgive Others For Not Doing So.

The Test Of Happiness Is Gratitude.

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.

A Faith Is That Which Is Able To Survive A Mood.

A Small Artist Is Content With Art; A Great Artist Is Content With Nothing Except Everything.

The Full Potentialities Of Human Fury Cannot Be Reached Until A Friend Of Both Parties Tactfully Intervenes.

There Is A Law Written In The Darkest Of The Books Of Life, And It Is This: If You Look At A Thing Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times, You Are Perfectly Safe; If You Look At It The Thousandth Time, You Are In Frightful Danger Of Seeing It For The First Time.

The Man Who Throws A Bomb Is An Artist, Because He Prefers A Great Moment To Everything.

The Perils, Rewards, Punishments, And Fulfillments Of An Adventure Must Be Real, Or The Adventure Is Only A Shifting And Heartless Nightmare. If I Bet I Must Be Made To Pay, Or There Is No Poetry In Betting. If I Challenge I Must Be Made To Fight, Or There Is No Poetry In Challenging. If I Vow To Be Faithful I Must Be Cursed When I Am Unfaithful, Or There Is No Fun Vowing.

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.

Children Are Grateful When Santa Claus Puts In Their Stockings Gifts Of Toys Or Sweets. Could I Not Be Grateful To Santa Claus When He Put In My Stockings The Gift Of Two Miraculous Legs? We Thank People For Birthday Presents Of Cigars And Slippers. Can I Thank No One For The Birthday Present Of Birth?

Excuse Me If I Enjoy Myself Rather Obviously! I Don't Often Have The Luck To Have A Dream Like This. It Is New To Me For A Nightmare To Lead Me To A Lobster. It Is Commonly The Other Way.

One Of The Chief Uses Of Religion Is That It Makes Us Remember Our Coming From Darkness, The Simple Fact That We Are Created.

My Life Is Passed In Making Bad Jokes And Seeing Them Turn Into True Prophecies.

Men Rush Towards Complexity, But They Yearn Towards Simplicity. They Try To Be Kings; But They Dream Of Being Shepherds.

The Frenchman Works Until He Can Play. The American Works Until He Can’t Play; And Then Thanks The Devil, His Master, That He Is Donkey Enough To Die In Harness. But The Englishman, As He Has Since Become, Works Until He Can Pretend That He Never Worked At All.

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

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.

Men Always Talk About The Most Important Things To Perfect Strangers.

You've Got That Eternal Idiotic Idea That If Anarchy Came It Would Come From The Poor. Why Should It? The Poor Have Been Rebels, But They Have Never Been Anarchists; They Have More Interest Than Any One Else In There Being Some Decent Government. The Poor Man Really Has A Stake In The Country. The Rich Man Hasn't; He Can Go Away To New Guinea In A Yacht. The Poor Have Sometimes Been Objected To Being Governed Badly; The Rich Have Always Objected To Being Governed At All. Aristocrats Were Always Anarchists, As You Can See From The Barons' Wars.

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.

The Best Way That A Man Could Test His Readiness To Encounter The Common Variety Of Mankind Would Be To Climb Down A Chimney Into Any House At Random, And Get On As Well As Possible With The People Inside. And That Is Essentially What Each One Of Us Did On The Day That He Was Born.

There Is One Thing Which Gives Radiance To Everything. It Is The Idea Of Something Around The Corner.

I Agree With The Realistic Irishman Who Said He Preferred To Prophesy After The Event.

The Mass Is Not Only About God Becoming Man, It Is About Man Becoming More Himself.

We Have All Forgotten What We Really Are. All That We Call Common Sense And Rationality And Practicality And Positivism Only Means That For Certain Dead Levels Of Our Life We Forget That We Have Forgotten. All That We Call Spirit And Art And Ecstasy Only Means That For One Awful Instant We Remember That We Forget.

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

'my Country, Right Or Wrong' Is A Thing No Patriot Would Ever Think Of Saying Except In A Desperate Case. It Is Like Saying 'my Mother, Drunk Or Sober.'

A Man Must Be Prepared Not Only To Be A Martyr, But To Be A Fool. It Is Absurd To Say That A Man Is Ready To Toil And Die For His Convictions If He Is Not Even Ready To Wear A Wreathe Around His Head For Them.

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.

Obviously If Any Actions, Even A Lunatic's, Can Be Causeless, Determinism Is Done For. If The Chain Of Causation Can Be Broken For A Madman, It Can Be Broken For A Man.

But Those Dealing In The Actual Manufacture Of Mind Are Dealing In A Very Explosive Material. The Material Is Not Merely The Clay Of Which Man Is Master, But The Truths Or Semblances Of Truth Which Have A Certain Mastery Over Man. The Material Is Explosive Because It Must Be Taken Seriously. The Men Writing Books Really Are Throwing Bombs.

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

When You Break The Big Laws, You Do Not Get Liberty; You Do Not Even Get Anarchy. You Get The Small Laws.

Americans Have A Taste For…rocking-chairs. A Flippant Critic Might Suggest That They Select Rocking-chairs So That, Even When They Are Sitting Down, They Need Not Be Sitting Still. Something Of This Restlessness In The Race May Really Be Involved In The Matter; But I Think The Deeper Significance Of The Rocking-chair May Still Be Found In The Deeper Symbolism Of The Rocking-horse. I Think There Is Behind All This Fresh And Facile Use Of Wood A Certain Spirit That Is Childish In The Good Sense Of The Word; Something That Is Innocent, And Easily Pleased.

The New School Of Art And Thought Does Indeed Wear An Air Of Audacity, And Breaks Out Everywhere Into Blasphemies, As If It Required Any Courage To Say A Blasphemy. There Is Only One Thing That It Requires Real Courage To Say, And That Is A Truism.

I Believe Your Own Accent Is Inimitable, Though I Shall Practice It In My Bath.

There Are No Wise Few. Every Aristocracy That Has Ever Existed Has Behaved, In All Essential Points, Exactly Like A Small Mob.

I Still Think Sincere Pessimism The Unpardonable Sin.

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.

It Is Human To Err; And The Only Final And Deadly Error, Among All Our Errors, Is Denying That We Have Ever Erred.

Altruists, With Thin, Weak Voices, Denounce Christ As An Egoist. Egoists (with Even Thinner And Weaker Voices) Denounce Him As An Altruist.

The Object Of Opening The Mind, As Of Opening The Mouth, Is To Shut It Again On Something Solid.

For Children Are Innocent And Love Justice, While Most Of Us Are Wicked And Naturally Prefer Mercy.

Moderate Strength Is Shown In Violence, Supreme Strength Is Shown In Levity.

Life Is Serious All The Time, But Living Cannot Be. You May Have All The Solemnity You Wish In Your Neckties, But In Anything Important (such As Sex, Death, And Religion), You Must Have Mirth Or You Will Have Madness.

Hope Means Hoping When Everything Seems Hopeless.

Unbelievable Things

People Accuse Journalism Of Being Too Personal; But To Me It Has Always Seemed Far Too Impersonal. It Is Charged With Tearing Away The Veils From Private Life; But It Seems To Me To Be Always Dropping Diaphanous But Blinding Veils Between Men And Men. The Yellow Press Is Abused For Exposing Facts Which Are Private; I Wish The Yellow Press Did Anything So Valuable. It Is Exactly The Decisive Individual Touches That It Never Gives; And A Proof Of This Is That After One Has Met A Man A Million Times In The Newspapers It Is Always A Complete Shock And Reversal To Meet Him In Real Life.

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

Over-civilization And Barbarism Are Within An Inch Of Each Other. And A Mark Of Both Is The Power Of Medicine-men.

Christianity Met The Mythological Search For Romance By Being A Story And The Philosophical Search For Truth By Being A True Story.

It Is A Strange Thing That Many Truly Spiritual Men, Such As General Gordon, Have Actually Spent Some Hours In Speculating Upon The Precise Location Of The Garden Of Eden. Most Probably We Are In Eden Still. It Is Only Our Eyes That Have Changed.

...but Out Of The Desert, From The Dry Places And The Dreadful Suns, Come The Cruel Children Of The Lonely God; The Real Unitarians Who With Scimitar In Hand Have Laid Waste The World. For It Is Not Well For God To Be Alone.

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

I Would Not Say That Old Men Grow Wise, For Men Never Grow Wise; And Many Old Men Retain A Very Attractive Childishness And Cheerful Innocence. Elderly People Are Often Much More Romantic Than Younger People, And Sometimes Even More Adventurous, Having Begun To Realize How Many Things They Do Not Know.

It Is Not Greedy To Enjoy A Good Dinner, Any More Than It Is To Enjoy A Good Concert. But I Do Think There Is Something Greedy About Trying To Enjoy The Dinner And The Concert At The Same Time.

Take Not Thy Thunder From Us, But Take Away Our Pride.

Correctitude Implies Nowadays A Formal Or Fastidious Use Of Words; And What Is Wanted Is Not So Much The Correct As The Living Use Of Words. It Is The Memory Of The Meaning Of A Word Which Is The Life Of The Word.

He Who Has No Sympathy With Myths Has No Sympathy With Men.

No Sane Person, I Hope, Would Accuse Me Of Saying That Every Distributist Must Drink Beer; Especially If He Could Brew His Own Cider Or Found Claret Better For His Health. But I Do Most Emphatically Scorn And Scout The Vulgar Refinement That Regards Beer As Something Unseemly And Humiliating. And I Would Shout The Name Of Beer A Hundred Times A Day, To Shock All The Snobs Who Have So Shameful A Sense Of Shame.

In The Modern Conflict Between The Smile And The Laugh, I Am All In Favor Of Laughing. The Recent Stage Of Culture And Criticism Might Very Well Be Summed Up As The Men Who Smile Criticizing The Men Who Laugh.

The Artistic Temperament Is A Disease That Affects Amateurs. Artists Of A Large And Wholesome Vitality Get Rid Of Their Art Easily, As They Breathe Easily Or Perspire Easily. But In Artists Of Less Force, The Thing Becomes A Pressure, And Produces A Definite Pain, Which Is Called The Artistic Temperament.

The Reason That Angels Fly Is That They Take Themselves So Lightly.

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

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

That All War Is Physically Frightful Is Obvious; But If That Were A Moral Verdict, There Would Be No Difference Between A Torturer And A Surgeon. There Are Certain Intellectuals Who Are Too Bright To Be Content With Merely Praising Peace But Who Are Infuriated By Anybody Praising War. If No War Is Possible, All Criminality Has Its Chance

A Turkey Is More Occult And Awful Than All The Angels And Archangels. In So Far As God Has Partly Revealed To Us An Angelic World, He Has Partly Told Us What An Angel Means. But God Has Never Told Us What A Turkey Means. And If You Go And Stare At A Live Turkey For An Hour Or Two, You Will Find By The End Of It That The Enigma Has Rather Increased Than Diminished.

Men Rush Toward Complexity; But Yearn For Simplicity.

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.

A Radical Generally Meant A Man Who Thought He Could Somehow Pull Up The Root Without Affecting The Flower. A Conservative Generally Meant A Man Who Wanted To Conserve Everything Except His Own Reason For Conserving Anything.

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.

In The End It Will Not Matter To Us Whether We Wrote Well Or Ill; Whether We Fought With Flails Or Reeds. It Will Matter To Us Greatly On What Side We Fought.

Our Civilization Has Decided That Determining The Guilt Or Innocence Of Men Is A Thing Too Important To Be Trusted To Trained Men. When It Wants A Library Catalogued, Or The Solar System Discovered, Or Any Trifle Of That Kind, It Uses Up Its Specialists. But When It Wishes Anything Done Which Is Really Serious, It Collects Twelve Of The Ordinary Men Standing Round. The Same Thing Was Done, If I Remember Right, By The Founder Of Christianity.

If A Man Only Likes Victory He Must Always Come Late For The Battle.

If We Are Bound To Improve, We Need Not Trouble To Improve. The Pure Doctrine Of Progress Is The Best Of All Reasons For Not Being A Progressive.

There Are No Boring Subjects, Only Disinterested Minds.

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 Wise Old Fairy Tales Never Were So Silly As To Say That The Prince And The Princess Lived Peacefully Ever Afterwards. The Fairy Tales Said That The Prince And Princess Lived Happily Ever Afterwards; And So They Did. They Lived Happily, Although It Is Very Likely That From Time To Time They Threw The Furniture At Each Other.

There Are A Great Many Good People, And A Great Many Sane People Here This Afternoon. Unfortunately, By A Kind Of Coincidence, All The Good People Are Mad, And All The Sane People Are Wicked.

The Materialist Is Sure That History Has Been Simply And Solely A Chain Of Causation, Just As The [lunatic] Is Quite Sure That He Is Simply And Solely A Chicken. Materialists And Madmen Never Have Doubts.

Democracy Means Government By The Uneducated, While Aristocracy Means Government By The Badly Educated.

If The Barricades Went Up In Our Streets And The Poor Became Masters, I Think The Priests Would Escape, I Fear The Gentlemen Would; But I Believe The Gutters Would Simply Be Running With The Blood Of Philanthropists.

A Mystic Is A Man Who Separates Heaven And Earth Even If He Enjoys Them Both.

A Beetle May Or May Not Be Inferior To A Man - The Matter Awaits Demonstration; But If He Were Inferior By Ten Thousand Fathoms, The Fact Remains That There Is Probably A Beetle View Of Things Of Which A Man Is Entirely Ignorant. If He Wishes To Conceive That Point Of View, He Will Scarcely Reach It By Persistently Revelling In The Fact That He Is Not A Beetle.

For They (capitalists) Hold As Their Chief Heresy, In A Coarser Form, The Fundamental Falsehood That Things Are Not Made To Be Used But Made To Be Sold. All The Collapse Of Their Commercial System In Their Own Time Has Been Due To That Fallacy Of Forcing Things On A Market Where There Was No Market; Of Continually Increasing The Power Of Supply Without Increasing The Power Of Demand; Of Briefly, Of Always Considering The Man Who Sells The Potato And Never Considering The Man Who Eats It.

The Real Pleasure-seeking Is The Combination Of Luxury And Austerity In Such A Way That The Luxury Can Really Be Felt.

Pleasure Seeking

I Am Not Fighting A Hopeless Fight. People Who Have Fought In Real Fights Don't, As A Rule.

Whether A Man Chooses To Tell The Truth In Long Sentences Or Short Jokes Is A Problem Analogous To Whether He Chooses To Tell The Truth In French Or In German.

Atheism Is Too Theological.

I Am Going To Hold A Pistol To The Head Of The Modern Man. But I Shall Not Use It To Kill Him–only To Bring Him To Life.

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.

A Good Joke Is The Closest Thing We Have To Divine Revelation.

Divine Revelation

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.

It Is A Mathematical Fact That If A Line Be Not Perfectly Directed Towards A Point, It Will Actually Go Further Away From It As It Comes Nearer To It.

The Average Woman Is At The Head Of Something With Which She Can Do As She Likes; The Average Man Has To Obey Orders And Do Nothing Else.

The Rich Are The Scum Of The Earth In Every Country.

Scum Of The Earth

Every Act Of Will Is An Act Of Self-limitation. To Desire Action Is To Desire Limitation. In That Sense, Every Act Is An Act Of Self-sacrifice. When You Choose Anything, You Reject Everything Else.

A Dead Thing Goes With The Stream, But Only A Living Thing Can Go Against It.

There Are Arguments For Atheism, And They Do Not Depend, And Never Did Depend, Upon Science. They Are Arguable Enough, As Far As They Go, Upon A General Survey Of Life; Only It Happens To Be A Superficial Survey Of Life.

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

He Said He Didn't Very Well Understand How George Was Going To Sleep Any More Than He Did Now, Seeing That There Were Only Twenty-four Hours In Each Day.

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.

It Is Well Sometimes To Half Understand A Poem In The Same Manner That We Half Understand The World.

That Young Man With The Long, Auburn Hair And The Impudent Face - That Young Man Was Not Really A Poet; But Surely He Was A Poem.

The Word Good Has Many Meanings.

Every One Of The Great Revolutionists, From Isaiah To Shelley, Have Been Optimists. They Have Been Indignant, Not About The Badness Of Existence, But About The Slowness Of Men In Realizing Its Goodness.

Nine Times Out Of Ten It Is The Coarse Word That Condemns An Evil, And The Refined Word That Excuses It.

Theology Is Simply That Part Of Religion That Requires Brains.

Blessed Is He That Expecteth Nothing, For He Shall Be Gloriously Surprised.

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.

A Citizen Can Hardly Distinguish Between A Tax And A Fine, Except That The Fine Is Generally Much Lighter.

To Complain That I Could Only Be Married Once Was Like Complaining That I Had Only Been Born Once.

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.

Very Few People In The World Would Care To Listen To The Real Defense Of Their Own Characters. The Real Defense, The Defense Which Belongs To The Day Of Judgment, Would Make Such Damaging Admissions, Would Clear Away So Many Artificial Virtues, Would Tell Such Tragedies Of Weakness And Failure, That A Man Would Sooner Be Misunderstood And Censured By The World Than Exposed To That Awful And Merciless Eulogy.

We Ought To Be Interested In That Darkest And Most Real Part Of A Man In Which Dwell Not The Vices That He Does Not Display, But The Virtues That He Cannot.

Moral Issues Are Always Terribly Complex For Someone Without Principles.

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

To Say That A Man Is An Idealist Is Merely To Say That He Is A Man.

A Man Was Meant To Be Doubtful About Himself, But Undoubting About The Truth; This Has Been Reversed. Nowadays The Part Of A Man That A Man Does Assert Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Assert - Himself. The Part He Doubts Is Exactly The Part He Ought Not To Doubt - The Divine Reason.

The Mind Moves By Instincts, Associations And Premonitions And Not By Fixed Dates Or Completed Processes. Action And Reaction Will Occur Simultaneously: Or The Cause Actually Be Found After The Effect. Errors Will Be Resisted Before They Have Been Properly Promulgated: Notions Will Be First Defined Long After They Are Dead.

We're All In The Same Boat, And We're All Seasick.

To Be Born Into This Earth Is To Be Born Into Uncongenial Surroundings, Hence To Be Born Into A Romance.

Price Is A Crazy And Incalculable Thing, While Value Is An Intrinsic And Indestructible Thing.

Most Americans Are Born Drunk, And Really Require A Little Wine Or Beer To Sober Them. They Have A Sort Of Permanent Intoxication From Within, A Sort Of Invisible Champagne. Americans Do Not Need To Drink To Inspire Them To Do Anything, Though They Do Sometimes, I Think, Need A Little For The Deeper And More Delicate Purpose Of Teaching Them How To Do Nothing.

Every Man Speaks Of Public Opinion, And Means By Public Opinion, Public Opinion Minus His Opinion.

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.

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

Just At Present You Only See The Tree By The Light Of The Lamp. I Wonder When You Would Ever See The Lamp By The Light Of The Tree.

So Far As A Man May Be Proud Of A Religion Rooted In Humility, I Am Very Proud Of My Religion; I Am Especially Proud Of Those Parts Of It That Are Most Commonly Called Superstition. I Am Proud Of Being Fettered By Antiquated Dogmas And Enslaved By Dead Creeds (as My Journalistic Friends Repeat With So Much Pertinacity), For I Know Very Well That It Is The Heretical Creeds That Are Dead, And That It Is Only The Reasonable Dogma That Lives Long Enough To Be Called Antiquated.

There Is Nothing So Weak, For Working Purposes, As This Enormous Importance Attached To Immediate Victory. There Is Nothing That Fails Like Success.

There Is A Road From The Eye To The Heart That Does Not Go Through The Intellect. Men Do Not Quarrel About The Meaning Of Sunsets; They Never Dispute That The Hawthorn Says The Best And Wittiest Thing About The Spring.

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

[fairy Tales] Make Rivers Run With Wine Only To Make Us Remember, For One Wild Moment, That They Run With Water.

Dipsomaniac And The Abstainer Are Not Only Both Mistaken, But They Both Make The Same Mistake. They Both Regard Wine As A Drug And Not As A Drink.

When A Woman Puts Up Her Fists To A Man She Is Putting Herself In The Only Posture In Which He Is Not Afraid Of Her.

Criticism Is Only Words About Words, And Of What Use Are Words About Such Words As These?

Boys Like Romantic Tales; But Babies Like Realistic Tales-because They Find Them Romantic.

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