Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who was the Chesterton's model for the character of Father Brown?
2. "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."
3. "When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything."
4. "A thing worth doing is worth doing badly."
5. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
6. "Tradition is the democracy of the dead."
7. "Saying 'My country, right or wrong,' is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
8. "Sometimes a thing is too big to be seen..."
9. "When you break the big laws . . . you get the small laws."
10. "Tolerance is the attitude of of those who do not believe in anything."
11. "We all feel the riddle of the earth. . . The mystery of life is the plainest part of it."
12. Chesterton on home schooling
13. Chesterton on self-defense
14. Chesterton's famous debate with Clarence Darrow
15. Origin of "3 Acres and a cow"
16. "What’s wrong with the world today?" "I am."
17. "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is ..."
18. Where are the Chesterton papers?
19. "Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."
20. "All their wars are merry and all their songs are sad."
21. "Heaven is a playground."
22. The line from the movie "Peter’s Friends" about being dropped down a chimney.
23. Life from other planets
24. What did Chesterton say about Birth Control?
25. "America is a nation with the soul of a church"

 

Quotations which might seem to be from Chesterton, but aren’t.

• "If a man is not a socialist by the time he’s 20, he has no heart. If he’s still a socialist when he’s 40, he has no mind."

• "A man knocking on the door of a brothel is knocking for God."

• "A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition."

• "A small man will cast a long shadow at sunset."

Quotations which might still be by Chesterton, but we still haven’t found them:

• "The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar."
• (along the same lines)Chesterton supposedly said what drew him to the Faith was the fact that "the pipe, the pint, and the cross could all fit together" within the worldview of Catholic sensibility.
  
  (Best guess so far is that they’re by Belloc, but we have no citations)