Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Liberty

• Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Mean, Practice

• The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Loneliness, Eagles, Liberty

• When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Law, Liberty, Anarchy

  Daily News (London), 29 July 1905

• Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Home, Adventure, Men

• The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dog, Drinking, Men

• Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Leaving, Liberty, Lovers

• Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Rights, Liberty, Authority

• The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Mean, Men

• He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Heart, Liberty, Politics

  "Varied Types". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

• The only object of liberty is life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Liberty, Objects

• Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Practice, Ideas, People

• Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Men, Ideas

• Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Religious, Funeral, Unity

• The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Family, Freedom, Men

• If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fall, Tired, Sleep

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1925.

• The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Liberty, Superstitions

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

• We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Blow, Keys

• What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Law, People, Community

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.146, Simon and Schuster

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