Gilbert Chesterton

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

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

The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.

A good civilization spreads over us like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.

No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

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.