Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Culture

• Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Teacher, Educational, Teaching

  "What's Wrong With The World". Part Four: Education: Or the Mistake About the Child. Ch. 4: The Truth About Education. Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

• There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Saint, Culture, May

• What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Hands, People

• I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Thinking, Talking

• Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Civilization, Medicine

• By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Men, Poverty

• The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Selfish, Confused, Cities

• I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Suffering, Our Society, Culture

• Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Self, Government, Culture

• With all that we hear of American hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that Americans seem to like to linger on longer words.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hustle, Culture, Strange

• It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fashion, Culture, Exile

• The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Different, Culture, Heritage

  "Holding on to Romanticism". "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, May 2, 1931.

• In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Laughing, Criticism

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