Great Throughts Treasury

"It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favor of skepticism."

"It is at unimportant moments that a man is a gentleman. At important moments he ought to be something better."

"It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period."

"It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote."

"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."

"It is ludicrous to suppose that the more skeptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything."

"It is not funny that anything else should fall down, only that a man should fall down ... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified."

"It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men – so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. I say God is One, and I say God is One but also Three, that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship."

"It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls."

"It is not the man of pleasure who has pleasure; it is not the man of the world who appreciates the world... It is the awkward man, whose evening dress does not fit him, whose gloves will not go on, whose compliments will not come off."

"It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only a God of Battles, a mere barbaric Lord of Hosts pitted in rivalry against other gods only as their envious foe. Well it is for the world that He was indeed a God of Battles. Well it is for us that He was to all the rest only a rival and a foe. In the ordinary way, it would have been only too easy for them to have achieved the desolate disaster of conceiving Him as a friend. It would have been only too easy for them to have seen Him stretching out His hands in love and reconciliation, embracing Baal and kissing the painted face of Astarte... It would have been easy enough for His worshipers to follow the enlightened course of Syncretism and the pooling of all the pagan traditions. It is obvious indeed that His followers were always sliding down this easy slope; and it required the almost demoniac energy of certain inspired demagogues, who testified to the divine unity in words."

"It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't."

"It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating."

"It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to skepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to skepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint."

"It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad."

"It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree."

"It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden."

"It is something to have wept as we have wept, it is something to have done as we have done, it is something to have watched when all men slept, and seen the stars which never see the sun. It is something to have smelt the mystic rose, although it break and leave the thorny rods, it is something to have hungered once as those must hunger who have ate the bread of gods."

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."

"It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it."

"It is the decisive people who have become civilized; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher skeptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians."

"It is the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school."

"It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can."

"It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the sense that a football match is popular."

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles."

"It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man."

"It is the vague modern who is not at all certain what is right who is most certain that Dante was wrong. The serious opponent of the Latin Church in history, even in the act of showing that it produced great infamies, must know that it produced great saints. It is the hard-headed stockbroker, who knows no history and believes no religion, who is, nevertheless, perfectly convinced that all these priests are knaves."

"It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress."

"It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile."

"It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who requires it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. Now the old pagan world went perfectly straightforward until it discovered that going straightforward is an enormous mistake. It was nobly and beautifully reasonable, and discovered in its death-pang this lasting and valuable truth, a heritage for the ages, that reasonableness will not do. The pagan age was truly an Eden or golden age, in this essential sense, that it is not to be recovered."

"It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild skepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more skeptical world than that in which men doubt whether there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretense that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow."

"It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it."

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."

"It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress, if his discontent does in fact paralyze his power of appreciating what he has got."

"It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously."

"It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls."

"It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness."

"It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack."

"It’s not that they can’t see the solution; it’s that they can’t see the problem."

"It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them."

"It's not the world that's gotten so much worse, but the news coverage that's gotten so much better."

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees."

"Jokes are generally honest; Complete solemnity is always dishonest"

"Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another."

"Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive."

"Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age."

"Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies."

"Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization."

"Latter-day skepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but skepticism is really reactionary. Skepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough."

"Leisure is being allowed to do nothing."