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The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives.

— G. K. Chesterton The Defendant (1901)

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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)

All G. K. Chesterton quotes →

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

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.