Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Dogma

• 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.

• The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Rights, Independence

• Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Doe, Dogma

  "The Victorian Age in Literature". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, p.43, 1913.

• An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Monday, Philosophy, Believe

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

• A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clouds, Sky, People

• So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Humility, Men, Long

• The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, World

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.244, Simon and Schuster

• Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Lying, Dogma

• Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Atheist, Atheism, Negative

• IF we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Hero, Thinking

• In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Two, People, Dogma

• We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Ideas, Racist

• Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Doubt, Dogma

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

• It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Passion, Selfishness, Doctrine

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