“Humanity is far too complex to have calculations made about it.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 15, 1933, quoted in “Statistics” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week’s events, it is time for the ‘unthinkable.’ (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone ‘entirely as we had hoped.’)”
Conrad Black in National Post June 28, 2025 [re Gaza and Iran]
“Apparently, I must give you a lecture. I grimaced neither at your impudence nor at your sentiment, but at your diction and style. I condemn clichés, especially those that have been corrupted by fascists and communists. Such phrases as ‘great and noble cause’ and ‘fruits of their labour’ have been given an ineradicable stink by Hitler and Stalin and all their vermin brood. Besides, in this century of the overwhelming triumph of science, the appeal of the cause of human freedom is no longer that it is great and noble; it is more or less than that; it is essential. It is no greater or nobler than the cause of edible food or the cause of effective shelter. Man must have freedom or he will cease to exist as man. The despot, whether fascist or communist, is no longer restricted to such puny tools as the heel or the sword or even the machine gun; science has provided him weapons that can give him the planet; and only men who are willing to die for freedom have any chance of living for it.’”
Nero Wolfe to his adopted daughter for being reckless and romantic not practical in fighting for liberty in Rex Stout The Black Mountain
“The London School of Economics would sponsor mock trials to aid the London hospitals, and Chesterton was invited to participate in a number of these, which always drew a large crowd (and thereby donations). On one occasion, he was pitted against several artists, charging them with constantly changing their standards so that a bewildered public knew not what to admire. Art was represented by Sir William Rothenstein, Eric Gill, and Sir Reginald Blomfield.... Blomfield, a famous architect, after hearing Chesterton’s opening argument, ‘deserted his colleagues and turned King’s Evidence.’”
Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“Be proficient in your field as well as in harmony among fellow men.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts
“Becoming Catholic does not mean leaving off thinking; it means learning how to think.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted without further attribution as header quotation on Mercy Hudson’s contribution to their new “My Name is Lazarus” conversion story series in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)
“An Eskimo woman is old at forty. An American woman is not old at forty. In fact, she’s not even forty.”
“An explorer” quoted in “Other Suspects – II Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)
Having been called an Optimist in his youth because of his opposition to fashionable youth pessimism “after naturally enjoying the daylight, I came to be troubled with the twilight…. All that there is, in substance, on the other side, is a row of official optimists, boasting of the liberties they have not got, and defending the religion they do not believe.”
G.K. Chesterton somewhere in G.K’s Weekly Vol. 22 (3/10/35 to 12/3/36) quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)