Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

... in so many Muslim communities now, saving face trumps critical thinking and truth-telling. This is why reform from within Islam is so difficult.

If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.

If you see that something is not working, you have to be willing to change course.

Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.

The starting point is a passionate anger at something that does not work very well.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.

Thinking is always dangerous to the status quo. [...] The moment you start thinking, you'll want to change something.

It's not the ink, it's the think.

I happen to be kind of an inquisitive guy and when I see things I don't like, I start thinking, why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them?

Learning gives creativity Creativity leads to thinking Thinking provides knowledge Knowledge makes you great.

The competitive instinct is what I think drives organizations and people to become better and better. It can promote change toward progress and development, which is good for everybody. It can be the motivating force behind improvement in our social well-being that is far beyond anything we might have imagined on our own.

Care about understanding and before you know it, in just a few decades, you'll have a system of thinking that gives you answers whenever you ask.

Creativity stands at the center of all education.

When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

First doubt, then inquire, then discover. This has been the process with all our great thinkers.

In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.

Might you be missing opportunities because you have been too quick to ask how instead of why?

A 'why' is a dangerous thing... It challenges old, comfortable ways, forces people to think about that they do instead of just mindlessly doing it. (Haplo) ... I think the danger is not so much in asking the 'why' as in believing you have come up with the only answer. (Alfred)

I think we realized the depth of frustration through the current political process. So we said, "OK, we know there's a serious problem here, we know we need to work on it," and now it's "Oh, we need to work on it a lot faster."

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think.