A blog dedicated to providing quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential (and quotable!) authors of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). If you do not know much about GKC, I suggest visiting the webpage of the American Chesterton Society as well as this wonderful Chesterton Facebook Page by a fellow Chestertonian

I also have created a list detailing examples of the influence of Chesterton if you are interested, that I work on from time to time.

(Moreover, for a list of short GKC quotes, I have created one here, citing the sources)

"...Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility."

-Heretics (1905)
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

"...whom some sages would strangle in pure compassion."

Professor Pearson, in his view of national life, is a well-meaning and vigorous upholder of the great principle of the survival of the nastiest. His remarks on the danger of allowing a physically "bad stock" to multiply, though not very precisely expressed, seems certainly to tend towards the idea of conducting the lives and loves of mankind on strict cattle-breeding principles. To our own simple minds it appears rather to depend on whether we wish to produce the same tone of thought and degree of culture in men and in cattle. The virtues which we demand from cows are at present few and simple, and, therefore, we pursue a certain physical régime: if ever we should particularity wish to see cows writing poetry, cows building hotels, and cows speaking in Parliament, we would probably adopt another régime. A random example of the unsuitability of a biological test of so intellectual a matter as civilization springs at once to the mind. There was born early in this century a man who scarcely had a day's complete health in his life, a perfect example of the "unfit" creature whom some sages would strangle in pure compassion. That man was Charles Darwin, on whose discovery the sages base their action. Their principle would never have been heard of if it had not been the custom to violate it. If this is not a reductio ad absurdum, we do not know what is.

-February 2, 1901, The Speaker

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