A Thing Worth Doing
The Society of G.K. Chesterton
Search
Close this search box.

A Thing Worth Doing

QUESTION: I keep hearing people quote Chesterton as saying, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” Where did he say that? And what on earth did he mean by it?

ANSWER: To answer your first question first, he said it in his wonderful and timely book, What’s Wrong with the World, which was written in 1910. Part Four of the book is entitled, “Education: Or the Mistake about the Child.” The famous, and much abused, line comes up at the end of Chapter 14 of that section.

As for your second question, the Quotemeister generally tries to avoid explaining what Chesterton means. For two reasons. One, Chesterton himself explains what he means quite nicely. It sometimes requires a little more reading. Two, we think students should write their own class assignments rather than having us do it for them. However, since this quotation is so famous and so misunderstood, we cannot resist the temptation to offer our interpretation.

Chesterton consistently defended the amateur against the professional, or the “generalist” against the specialist, especially when it came to “the things worth doing.” There are things like playing the organ or discovering the North Pole, or being Astronomer Royal, which we do not want a person to do at all unless he does them well. But those are not the most important things in life. When it comes to writing one’s own love letters and blowing one’s own nose, “these things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.” This, argues Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) is “the democratic faith: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves – the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state.”

As for “the rearing of the young,” which is the education of the very young, this is a job not for the specialist or the professional, but for the “generalist” and the amateur. In other words, for the mother, who Chesterton argues is “broad” where men are “narrow.” In What’s Wrong with the World, Chesterton foresaw the dilemma of daycare and the working mother, that children would end up being raised by “professionals” rather than by “amateurs.” And here we must understand “amateur” in its truest and most literal meaning. An amateur is someone who does something out of love, not for money. She does what she does not because she is going to be paid for her services and not because she is the most highly skilled, but because she wants to do it. And she does “the things worth doing,” which are the things closest and most sacred to all of humanity – nurturing a baby, teaching a child the first things, and, in fact, all things.

The line, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” is not an excuse for poor efforts. It is perhaps an excuse for poor results. But our society is plagued by wanting good results with no efforts (or rather, with someone else’s efforts). We hire someone else to work for us, to play for us (that is, to entertain us), to think for us, and to raise our children for us. We have left “the things worth doing” to others, on the poor excuse that others might be able to do them better.

Finally, and less heavily, we should also point out that the phrase is a defense of hobbies. This was confirmed by Chesterton himself. The phrase became famously attached to Chesterton in his own life. And it was perhaps Chesterton’s only line which he actually quoted in something else he wrote. From his mystery “When Doctors Agree” published in the collection, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937):

Paradox has been defined as “Truth standing on her head to get attention.” Paradox has been defended; on the ground that so many fashionable fallacies still stand firmly on their feet, because they have no heads to stand on. But it must be admitted that writers, like other mendicants and mountebanks, frequently do try to attract attention. They set out conspicuously, in a single line in a play , or at the head or tail of a paragraph, remarks of this challenging kind; as when Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote: “The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule”; or Oscar Wilde observed: “I can resist everything except temptation”; or a duller scribe (not to be named with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr. Pond) said in defence of hobbies and amateurs and general duffers like himself: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?”

14 thoughts on “A Thing Worth Doing”

  1. I remind myself of this phrase often and it’s nice to know the actual meaning and intention behind it. For me, it helps me get through depression. If i don’t want to get out of bed and start my morning routine, I can see it as a daunting task that is just beyond my energy/desire and not do it, or I can do just enough to get by. Example: If the only way to brush your teeth is to brush for 120 seconds and floss and use mouthwash, someone suffering from debilitating depression isn’t gonna even try. But knowing that doing a crappy job, like just brushing for ten seconds, is ok … well at least you did SOMETHING. You don’t always have to cook a well rounded breakfast, and if you eat even just a piece of bread at least you ate something. Don’t feel like going outside for fresh air? Walk to the mailbox at the curb and that’s all. It’s more than doing nothing at all. Anyway, it’s helped me in that way. So thank you Mr. Chesterton.

  2. For me it means that we should start doing things and stop being perfectionists , instead of wasting time on planning how to do something perfectly , just start even if u think it’s not that good bc most of the time it’s really not that bad our resistance is just using it as an excuse for our procrastination, which will mostly leads to anxiety and depression.

  3. I have used this quote a lot actually to get started on projects that I feel I am not an expert in but that doing the best I can even if it’s not the best a more expert person could do – helps me to get started, keep going and eventually finish the project.

    Waiting till one has taken one more class or studied one more avenue can lead to never, getting started. I’ve published six books this way and working on another. I know for a fact a whole lot of folks could do it better. but what the heck!

  4. “Two, we think students should write their own class assignments rather than having us do it for them.” But of course. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

  5. So, get yourself a hobby and forget the consequences or sense of achievement (need for such affirmation) and the liberation that brings.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *