“There are no bad things, only bad uses of things.”
G.K. Chesterton “in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas” quoted by Gabriel Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023) [but in defence of AI which I suspect may test that rule severely]
“No good was ever done by one-sided controversy.”
G.K. Chesterton in New Witness August 2, 1918, quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“We do not see in the past a perpetual line of increasing liberation or enlargement of artistic experiment. What we see in the past is the much more human business of men first doing something badly; then doing it well; then doing it too well – or, at least, too easily and too often. Then they commonly begin to do something else; but the thing is much more often an old thing than a new thing.”
G.K. Chesterton in “Novelty in Art” in Illustrated London News October 6, 1928, reprinted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023) [critiquing “the rather antiquated theory of progress”.]
“An After School Satan Club plans to begin offering activities to children at a Tennessee elementary school following Christmas break, officials said. The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, news outlets reported.... A flyer about the club says the Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religion that views Satan ‘as a literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.’ It says it does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology, but offers activities that ‘emphasize a scientific, rationalistic, non-superstitious worldview.’”
Associated Press December 13, 2023
“The true modern cowardice is that no one has the courage to pronounce truisms. Consequently the chief evil of all modern argument is that it will not begin, like Euclid, with the things that are quite obvious; Euclid is dull during the first four or five pages; not before the third book does he begin to become even feebly brilliant. In short, the characteristic modern controversy has this defect, that those partaking in it have not the courage to be dull, have not the courage to state the things which are only evident to some.”
G.K. Chesterton in the Morning Post Oct. 18, 1906, quoted in “Chesterton For Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
In a wide-ranging discussion with David Leis of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy we talked about the Middle East, the rot in Canadian academia, the collapse of governance, the revolt of the elites against Western civilization and more besides… including how to fix things.
“Our journalised world does not regard words as part of any connected argument, but as disconnected emotional epithets thrown at some object; the only question being whether it is an object of hatred or idolatry, and whether the things thrown are bombs or bouquets. Nobody thinks that anybody might possibly have another object, the object called truth, and try to reach it by thinking instead of throwing things.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted in Dale Ahlquist “Why is America not Normal? G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 13 March 14, 1031 – September 5, 1931” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal.”
Northrop Frye The Great Code [describing the attitude of the author of Ecclesiastes].