Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I don’t care for ideological people. It’s like those people just want to stop thinking.

Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.

A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.

God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.

When people feel a certain religion claims to have all the answers, that's what turns them off.

Nor bigots who but one way see, through blinkers of authority.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.

One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.

Dogma is less useful than cow dung. One can make whatever one likes out of it …

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.

They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say 'Shut up.'

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma.

Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.

One thing about liberals: It doesn't even occur to them that there is another side to an argument. They are so convinced of the righteousness of their own position that it doesn't dawn on them that a reasonable person might have a different viewpoint.

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

Obstinacy and heat of opinion are the surest proof of stupidity.