“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
– Illustrated London News, Dec. 31, 1910
[This popular version is actually a paraphrase. Chesterton’s original formulation is, “A real soldier does not fight because he has something that he hates in front of him. He fights because he has something that he loves behind his back.” – Ed.]
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Share on X“[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.”
– Illustrated London News, July 19, 1919
“War is not ‘the best way of settling differences;’ it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.”
– Illustrated London News, July 24, 1915
“There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.”
– “The Demons and Philosophers,” The Everlasting Man
“The only defensible war is a war of defense.”
– “The Shadow of the Sword,” Autobiography
“How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.”
– The Listener, March 6, 1935