“I can never hear of one of those savage or idolatrous faiths without wishing that I belonged to it. When I read of savages worshipping an odd-looking stone, I think what sensible fellows they must be. When I am told of a chieftain who believes he is descended from a shark, I wish sincerely that I could share his delusion. As a matter of intellect and conviction I believe in one religion; but, as a matter of fancy and sympathy I can believe in any number…. I can feel a sympathy for any religion that is a religion.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Oct. 10, 1908, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)

In my latest Epoch Times column I say that an ideology, aka paradigm or worldview, is essential to coherent thought. So instead of the “I know you are but what am I?” spectacle of people trading cries of “ideologue” we should try to debate the reasons why we disagree about which evidence matters and what it says. And your goal should not be to avoid ideologies but to choose a sensible one.

“If there is not real responsibility for anything, why should we be responsible for either justice or mercy towards murderers?”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 23, 1928, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)

“If you think wrong, you go wrong.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News September 12, 1914, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)

“the waters are always smoothest and even most polished when they pour over the precipice.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted by Dale Ahlquist in “Chesterton University” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022) [with particular reference to those topics on which polite society and the Establishment stifle debate]

“Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Escott was shy and lonely.”

Sinclair Lewis Babbitt

“‘Whenever a person proclaims to you ‘In worldly matters I’m a child,’ you consider that that person is only a crying off from being held accountable, and that you have got that person’s number, and it’s Number One. Now I am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a company, but I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution to the unwary, my dear …’”

Inspector Bucket re Harold Skimpole in Charles Dickens Bleak House

“Al Gore prefers to say, ‘Well, in my faith tradition...’ As a rule, folks with a faith tradition tend not to call it such. At Friday prayers in Mecca, the A-list imams don’t say, ‘Well, in my faith tradition we believe in killing all the infidels.’”

Mark Steyn's “Happy Warrior” column in National Review Dec. 13, 2004