Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About History

• The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Song, War, Men

  Ballad of the White Horse (1911) bk. 2, p. 35

• History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  History, Slides

• We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Past, History, Certain

• The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Past, Men

• The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Past, Men, Knowing

• Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Philosophy, Reality

  1908 Orthodoxy, ch.3.

• The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Military, Believe, Army

  Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2

• "The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself. ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer. ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Long, History

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