All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking...
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
It is not funny that anything else should fall down only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only...
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.