“It is psychologically impossible, when we hear real scientific statistics, not to think that they mean something. Generally they mean nothing. Sometimes they mean something that isn’t true.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Nov. 18, 1905, quoted in “Statistics” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“Fools can be found to support anything…”
Theodore Dalrymple in National Review November 20, 2006 [specifically re people who call the niqab liberating for women].
“Never get mad at anybody for knowing more than you do. It’s not their fault.”
“Elizabethtown (KENTUCKY) News” quoted in “Other Suspects I Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“[W]e are learning to do a great many clever things. Unless we are much mistaken the next great task will be to learn not to do them.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in “News With Views” “compiled by Mark Pilon” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025) [the specific context is using CRISPR to bring back extinct animals].
“We are not very credulous about statistics. It was in some ways unfortunate when men found they could tell lies in Arabic numerals as well as in Roman letters.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly May 12, 1928, quoted in “Statistics” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“If someone asks him how he [extremely productive historian Niall Ferguson] manages his time, he says, ‘I get up in the morning and work. My puzzle is with people who spend 10 years not producing a book. What do they do?’”
National Post March 14, 2001
“Carroll’s widow, Anne... told us that G.K. Chesterton was not only fundamental to Warren Carroll’s thinking but to the philosophy on which he founded the college [Christendom College, in Fort Royal, VA, home to the world’s largest thurifer]. His two great precepts – ‘Truth exists’ and ‘The Incarnation happened’ – are engraved on his tombstone. Anne said, ‘That is distilling G.K. Chesterton into five words. Truth exists, the Incarnation happened.’”
Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“If you leave your children a world where you never stood up, they’ll inherit one where they can’t.”
Emailed as an image and without attribution by a friend Sept. 8, 2025