Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Church

• I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thinking, Church, Needs

• Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Jesus, Fearless, Church

• Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Brotherhood, Church, Doe

• As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, War, Views

• When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, People, Special

  "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, December 14, 1907.

• The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Plato, Believe, Men

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

• The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wine, Glasses, Catholic

• What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Moving, Angel, Fighting

• The Church is a house with a hundred gates: and no two men enter at exactly the same angle

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Two, House

• We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Moving, Church

• Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Opposites, Church

• Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Effort, Church, Heresy

• The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Men, Catholic

• The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Church, States, Church And State

• The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, America, Church

• In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Unique, Church, Easy

• If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Church, World, Grows

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