Common Sense 101 Quotes

“He seems so frivolous and so careless, but he gives money to beggars, not frivolously or carelessly, but because he believes in giving money to beggars, and giving it to them “where they stand”.

He says he knows perfectly well all the arguments against giving money to beggars. But he finds those to be precisely the arguments for giving money to them. If beggars are lazy or deceptive or wanting a drink, he knows only too well his own lack of motivation, his own dishonesty, his own thirst.

He doesn’t believe in “scientific charity” because that is too easy, as easy as writing a check. He believes in “promiscuous charity” because that is really difficult. “It means the most dark and terrible of all human actions—talking to a man. In fact, I know of nothing more difficult than really talking to the poor men we meet.” (pp. 13-14)”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The problem is this. We worship the new instead of the eternal. And when we worship the new, we are always changing our allegiances, because there will always be something newer. Look”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“You can say anything against a man who praises himself, but a man who blames himself is invulnerable.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Politicians now think they have to educate the electorate and explain to them what is good for them. Gone are the days when the electorate educated their representatives .”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“so democracy means more than just going to vote. Democracy means that people should truly have the opportunity to govern their own affairs. The”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Every leader-writer who thunders ‘Galileo’ at us assumes that we know even less about Galileo than he does.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“understanding the facts is more important than knowing the facts. But”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Someone who doesn’t know history, he says, is “in the literal sense half-witted . . . He does not know what half his own words mean, or what half his own actions signify.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“whenever he hears a man say that life is not worth living, he takes out the gun and offers to shoot him. “Always with the most satisfactory results”, he laughs.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Materialism is really our established church; for the Government will really help it to persecute the heretics.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“long before even Copernicus stated it, it had been suggested in the very middle of the Middle Ages by Cusa: and that the persecuting Church proceeded to persecute him by making him a Cardinal.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“We have taken government and turned it into a surrogate parent, even a surrogate self, as we let regulation replace conscience. We”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“Wage slavery is still slavery. It may provide a few creature comforts, but a wage slave is even more disposable than a slave. Wage”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“If you attempt an actual argument with a paper of the opposite politics, says Chesterton, “you will have no answer except slanging or silence.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The effect of this staleness is the same everywhere; it is seen in all drug-taking and dram-drinking and every form of the tendency to increase the dose. Men seek stranger sins or more startling obscenities as stimulants to their jaded sense. They seek after mad oriental religions for the same reason. They try to stab their nerves to life. . . . They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The free-lovers say: “Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.” Emphatically it will not work.”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton

“The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” This”
― Dale Ahlquist, Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton