The Cult of
Progress
- "Progress is a comparative of
which we have not settled the superlative" - Chapter 2, Heretics,
1905.
- "Progress should mean that we
are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always
changing the vision" - Orthodoxy, 1908.
- "My attitude toward progress
has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with
people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday" - New
York Times Magazine, 2/11/23.
- "Men invent new ideals because
they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm,
because they are afraid to look back" - What's Wrong With The
World, 1910.
- "Tradition means giving votes
to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of
the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who
merely happen to be walking around" - Orthodoxy, 1908.
- "The modern world is a crowd of
very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of
traffic" - ILN, 5/29/26.
- "Comforts that were rare among
our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale;
and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air,
space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever
that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it" - Commonwealth,
1933.
- "A detective story generally
describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern
philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man
can possible be alive" - A Miscellany of Men.
- "None of the modern machines,
none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the
people who choose to use them" Ð Daily News 7-21-06.
- "I still hold. . . that the
suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else
destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth"
- The Coloured Lands.
- "The whole curse of the last
century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the
idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a
shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of
the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead
that he swings" - "The New House", Alarms and
Discursions.
- "To hurry through one's leisure
is the most unbusiness-like of actions" - "A Somewhat
Improbable Story", Tremendous Trifles.
- "This is the age in which thin
and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic
majorities" - ILN, 12/20/19.
- "The past is not what it
was" - A Short History of England.
For further information, look at
"American Chesterton Society".
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