8 Gilbert Keith Chesterton Quotes on Ethics

Gilbert Keith Chesterton quotes on ethics

12. For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

20. Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

23. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

30. To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

68. 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'.

86. An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful. As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science. And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

123. 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 is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

140. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.