Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they m...
It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgre...
If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practica...
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom the...
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.
I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
Father Brown: I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland, I only said it was always dangerous.
There nearly always is a method in madness.
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.
The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves;...
Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.
Somehow one must love the world without being worldly.
You've got to understand one of the tricks of the modern mind, a tendency that most people obey without noticing it. In the village or suburb outside there's an inn with the sign of St. George and the...
You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.
Without the family, we are helpless before the State.
Why is it, he asked vaguely, that I think you are quite a decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory? He paused a moment, and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, Is itbecause you are...
We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.
We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher.
We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the ‘lower classes’ when we mean humanity minus ourselves.