Gilbert K. Chesterton Progress Quotations

But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.

If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.

Progress is the mother of all problems.

Progress is the mother of problems.

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

The past is not what it was.

This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.

None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.

Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.