Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

The Lord gave us two ends - one to sit on and the other to think with. Success depends on which one we use the most.

Common sense is not so common.

He that cannot reason is a fool.

Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.

There is a mighty big difference between good sound reasons and reasons that sound good.

Reason: The arithmetic of the emotions.

It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!

I was lucky in that I had a mother that was full of this colloquial wisdom and she used to say to me 'You know, failure is not the opposite of success, it's the stepping stone to success. There is nobody who has not failed along the way.' So I think its very important for young women, especially as they are starting in life, to recognize that because otherwise, they only see people's success. So, when I speak, I speak of my failures.

What is reasoned has nothing to do with what is reasonable.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

Convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one's faith is, the more it whets one's reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.

There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.

It is true that the successful quest for wisdom might lead to the result that wisdom is not the one thing needful. But this result would owe its relevance to the fact that it is the result of the quest for wisdom: the very disavowal of reason must be reasonable disavowal.

It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.