Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

It's usually only the intellectual ones who understand what's going on in what I do.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

I love the gray areas, but I like the gray areas as considered by bright, educated, courageous people.

I think it's OK that everyone's not real heavy and wordy and heady.

When years from now people look back on today, they will think the same thing they already do but with more reasons for it.

I don't want people running around saying Gwen Brooks's work is intellectual. That makes people think instantly about obscurity. It shouldn't have to mean that, but it often seems to.

Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I'm done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense --Reply by Dove to Aly's silent inquiry

I think progress is a sort of comfortable disease, and we've got a media that says entertainment and celebrity, which isn't bad in itself but it stops the real issues coming forward.

When smart people are nice, it's always terrifying, because I know they're taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things.

As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place.

Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.

An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.

I have a great affection for people who are intellectually engaged with the world, and who don't treat everything superficially. And I think, when people talk about nerdiness, what they're really talking about is smart people who who are trying to think hard about the world. And I don't think that's an insult, I think that's a great thing.

I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem to indicate that once we've defined something, we don't need to think about it anymore.

You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

I think sometimes people haven't really quite worked out how to peg me, or exactly what it is that I do. In that way, I feel lucky that I can get to play different things because they haven't quite decided what I am.

If you think what you see on TV is prejudiced, it is. Follow your instincts.

Without knowing myself, I have no real basis for thinking.

I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it.

Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way.

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.