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Don't you believe people when they tell you that people sought for a sign, and believed in miracles because they were ignorant. They did it because they were wise, filthily, vilely wise—too wise to eat or sleep or put on their boots with patience.

— G. K. Chesterton The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

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Wisdom

More quotes by G. K. Chesterton

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.

The Defendant (1901)

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Charles Dickens (1906)

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.

The Defendant (1901)

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: G. K. Chesterton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.