A Quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Quote Topics

Defines Doubt Every Every Man Instant Man Religion Thus Truths Turn

Quote Author

Gilbert K. Chesterton
English - Writer
May 29, 1874 - June 14, 1936

Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is always a great honour to mention a truth which has not become widespread yet. One of these truths is that man has no soul; he has only 'body' and 'mind'. Man's unshakable belief on the soul will not change this scientific truth! No belief can be higher than the scientific truths! Man can be born, can walk and work and can think without owning a mysterious and an immaterial soul! The soullessness of the man is a great tragedy both for the man and for the religion. But Man, contrary to the religion, will come out with triumph from this tragedy.

Mehmet Murat Ildan

What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.

John Green

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

Will Durant

I'm a miracle man, things happen which I don't plan, I've never planned anything. Whatsoever I do, I want it to be an instant action object, instant reaction subject. Instant input, instant output.

Lee “Scratch” Perry

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Whenever anyone utters with reverence the name of Babaji, that devotee attracts an instant spiritual blessing.

Lahiri Mahasaya

My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths

Moses Mendelssohn

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion?

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Without doubt, in animation each frame is important, every movement defines the character.

Lucrecia Martel

There sure are a lot of these 'instant' products on the market. Instant coffee, instant tea, instant pudding, instant cereal... instant dislike.

Charles M. Schulz

One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.

Sigrid Undset

The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?

Mark Hopkins

This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

Immanuel Kant

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.