There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.