Quote #122

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut.

More from Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  1. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
  2. The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme…
  3. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sa…
  4. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that …
  5. There is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not a…
  6. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.
  7. The materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligen…
  8. The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind …

All Gilbert Keith Chesterton quotes