A Common Sense Birthday

Today is the 135th Birthday of the "Apostle of Common Sense", G.K. Chesterton. What he said in the early part of the 20th Century is just as pertanent today as it was a 100 years ago. The topics ranged from history to politics, religion to science. Here are a few of his pearls of wisdom:

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910

"A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter." - ILN, 5/25/31 (Even truer today!)

". . . For friendship implies individuality; whereas comradeship really implies the temporary subordination, if not the temporary swamping of individuality. Friends are the better for being two; but comrades are the better for being two million." ("A Case of Comrades" The Apostle and the Wild Ducks)

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - ILN, 4/19/30

"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice." - A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901

"The only object of liberty is life." (Irish Impressions. 219)

"Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections." (Illustrated London News, June 6, 1931)

"There is no bigot like the atheist." (Magic)

"When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded." ("The Way of the Desert" The New Jerusalem)

"Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers." - ILN, 4/7/23 Remember this was 85 + years ago, things haven't improved, have they?)

"The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense." - ILN, 9/7/29

"We are learning to do a great many clever things...The next great task will be to learn not to do them.- "Queen Victoria" Varied Types

"It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged." - The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21 (Again, things definitely haven't improved, have they?)

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." - ILN, 4/19/24

"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." - Christendom in Dublin, 1933 Do I have to say it?)

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

Finally, what I think is 1 of his best:

"The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad." ("Roman Converts" Dublin Review, Jan-Mar. 1925)