Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

There are two things that are infinite: The universe and human folly. And sometimes I am not sure about the universe.

Look up at the stars, not down at your feet.

Nature is God's workshop. The sky is his resume. The universe is his calling card. You want to know who God is? See what he has done.

It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life.

Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don't have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.

If God is everywhere, I had concluded, then He is in food. Therefore, the more I ate the godlier I would become. Impelled by this new religious fervor, I glutted myself like a fanatic.

It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.

When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect.

The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers.

While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love, and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought... There is recompense for suffering. A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. All will be well. I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.

Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?

For the first time, we saw our world, not as a solid, immovable, kind of indestructible place, but as a very small, fragile-looking world just hanging against the blackness of space.

I believe that great weirdness stalks the universe. That's not the issue with me, but it is not tacky. It is not tacky.

A sombrero fell out of the sky and landed on the main street of town in front of the mayor, his cousin, and a person out of work. The day was scrubbed clean by the desert air. The sky was blue. It was the blue of human eyes, waiting for something to happen. There was no reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky. No airplane or helicopter was passing overhead and it was not a religious holiday.

Our planet is a tiny atom in god's kingdom.

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

What excellent fools religion makes of men.

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd.