Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIn the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.
Gilbert K. ChestertonWhen you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
Gilbert K. ChestertonEvery remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.
Gilbert K. ChestertonEugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.
Gilbert K. ChestertonPessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.
Gilbert K. Chesterton