"Society is so abnormal"

“OUR society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people’s property.”

~G.K. Chesterton: Commonwealth, Oct. 22, 1932.

"Capitalism"

"WHEN I say "Capitalism," I commonly mean something that may be stated thus: "That economic condition in which there is a class of capitalists, roughly recognizable and relatively small, in whose possession so much of the capital is concentrated as to necessitate a very large majority of the citizens serving those capitalists for a wage." This particular state of things can and does exist, and we must have some word for it, and some way of discussing it. But this is undoubtedly a very bad word, because it is used by other people to mean quite other things. Some people seem to mean merely private property. Others suppose that capitalism must mean anything involving the use of capital. But if that use is too literal, it is also too loose and even too large. If the use of capital is capitalism, then everything is capitalism. Bolshevism is capitalism and anarchist communism is capitalism; and every revolutionary scheme, however wild, is still capitalism."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Outline of Sanity.

"There shall be a revolution"

“BECAUSE a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be a usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.”

~G.K. Chesterton: What’s Wrong with the World.

 

Robert Lynd on G. K. Chesterton

“THE truth is, he never ceased to be a poet even when he was writing prose. How fine a poet he was at his best everyone who has read the “Ballad of the White Horse” knows. Some of his verse might be described as a riot of rhetoric, but the rhetoric is the genuine expression of a riotous and exuberant imagination. The novels, too, were riots – some of them glorious riots, with little imps of nonsense tumbling head-over-heels among apocalyptic visions. There are writers who hold that Chesterton squandered his genius and endangered his literary immortality by his indifference to form. He was certainly of a squandering temperament, but in his case it was not a common spendthrift but a millionaire who did the squandering. He once said that if he were a millionaire he would like just to “chuck his money about” – not to deserving people, but to “just chuck it about.” In literature and journalism he may be said to have chucked his genius about. It seems to me likely that we shall still for many generations to come be collecting the gold pieces that he has strewn with such magnificent recklessness.”

Charlatans and Quacks

"THE argument used by professional men of science that what they call quack remedies are superstitions is really an argument in a circle. It amounts to this, that the herbs used by an old woman are untrustworthy because she is superstitious; and she is superstitious because she believes in such herbs. Her method is bad because she is stupid; but the main proof of her stupidity is that she pursues her own method."

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, Feb. 15, 1908.

"The pirate"

"THE pirate who grew rich on the high seas at least could not be a coward; the pirate who grows rich on the high prices may be that, as well as everything else that is unworthy."

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, Jan. 7, 1928.

The Outline of Sanity

“THE practical tendency of all trade and business today is towards big commercial combinations, more imperial, more impersonal, more international than many a communist commonwealth.” ~G.K. Chesterton
 
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“G.K. Chesterton was one of those masters who charted a course for us back to the real and the normal, and whose counsel is available to us through a thorough reading of “The Outline of Sanity.” This is “not” another book about the dissolution of the West. It is rather a book that pulls the plug on the lies; it draw lines and makes distinctions. It does so in order to highlight feasible and wholly attainable remedies for our very precarious situation…. Chesterton begins his “Outline” by attacking the illusions that clutter our lives and thus pollute our thinking. He begins at the beginning, which means talking about the mess that both Capitalism and Socialism have made of the world. He explains what these ‘isms’ are and what they are leading to inexorably.” ~from the Preface, by Directors of IHS Press.

 

• IHS Press, http://www.ihspress.com/

 

• The Outline at ACS bookstore, http://bit.ly/19ylBWS

 

• The Outline of Sanity, a lecture by Dale Ahlquist, http://bit.ly/17UGkjE