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"It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it's only incredible. But I'm much more certain it didn't happen than that Parnell's ghost didn't appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand."
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"You cannot force someone to believe something they do not believe, you can only manage to force them to speak or act as if they do."
"Religion is a non-alcoholic man's alcohol. Alcohol is a non-religious man's religion."
"Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way."
"The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe, the theist believes a 'who' created the universe."
"They tell you the story of Job so often to remind you when you lose it all, stay calm. I've always refused it. I hated the story. It made no sense, and then I developed the belief that religion's only purpose is to keep the poor from murdering the rich. And then I found the most dangerous folks are those who have nothing to lose, and I put it all together."
"When my problems seem overwhelming and impossible to solve, I hold fast to these facts: God is real, He is right, and He cares."
Explore more quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
"The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship, even natural to worship unnatural things."
"Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' even ifyou only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature aname of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he couldcreate one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else."
"Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written."
"Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say."
"That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child."
"When Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you,be hard" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to you, be dead." Sensibility is the definition oflife."
"All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind."
"But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty."
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