Past Words on Today’s Dilemas

Absentee Fathers
"What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible" - The Everlasting Man, CW II, p.186.

Back To Nature
"Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home" - Chesterton Review, August, 1993.

Bigotry
"Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition" - Lunacy and Letters.

Capital Punishment
"For my part, I would have no executions except by the mob; or, at least, by the people acting quite exceptionally. I would make capital punishment impossible except by act of attainder. Then there would be some chance of a few of our real oppressors getting hanged - ILN, 2/13/09.

Condom Distribution
"Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia" - GK's Weekly, 1/17/31.

Credibility of the Media
"Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers" - ILN, 4/7/23.

The Cult of Fame
"America has a genius for the encouragement of fame" - The Father Brown Omnibus.

The Education System

• "The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common-sense" - ILN, 9/7/29.
• "Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to describe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads" - NashÕs Pall Mall Magazine. April, 1935.

Heaven's Gate (Cults)

• "How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?" - Orthodoxy.
• "From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end" - ILN, 9/24/27.

A Litigious Society
"The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end" - ILN, 3/24/23.

The O.J. Trial

• Scientific Evidence: "The ultimate effect of the great science of Fingerprints is this: that whereas a gentleman was expected to put on gloves to dance with a lady, he may now be expected to put on gloves in order to strangle her" - Avowals and Denials, 1935.
• The Verdict: "Only poor men get hanged" - ILN, 7/17/09.

Police Authority
"Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed" - What I Saw In America, 1922.

Psychoanalysis
"Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are" - ILN, 6/23/28.

Reproductive Rights
"Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like" - Babies and Distributism, GK's Weekly, 11/12/32.

Separation of Church and State
"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" - Autobiography, 1937.

Urban Renewal
"Some people leave money for the improvement of public buildings. I can leave dynamite for the improvement of public buildings" Ð ILN 3-17-06.

Vegetarianism
"A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet" - William Blake.

Z.Z. Top
"You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion" - "How I Met the President" Tremendous Trifles.

An information from "American Chesterton Society".

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