An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong.
G.K. Chesterton
Related
Marriage is an institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
SOURCE UNKNOWN Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
MAE WEST Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
MAE WEST One of the premises of free market capitalism as an institution, as wrong headed as it might be, is ...
CRAIG DUNN An institution rooted in slavery cannot be the voice of our people.
DASHANNE STOKES Marriage is a wonderful institution... but who wants to live in an institution?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
KATHARINE HEPBURN Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
MAE WEST Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
GROUCHO MARX Marriage is a wonderful institution...but who wants to live in an institution?
GROUCHO MARX Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
MARX GROUCHO Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
H. L. MENCKEN Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
H. L. MENCKEN Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
MAE WEST Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore – and then you get som...
KARL LAGERFELD If people institute wrong institutions, wrong institutions do not just produce wrong people, but wro...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH It seems to me that Sotheby's is very much like the British monarchy: an old and apparently very...
ROBERT LACEY Monday Night Football is a television institution, if not a cultural institution, ... It's not unlik...
JEFFREY LOGSDON It is more than a book, it is an institution which rules the Christian world.
PHILIP SCHAFF An institution rooted in slavery can never set us free.
DASHANNE STOKES It sends the wrong message when we name an institution like that after someone like Bishop Hart.
BARBARA BLAINE [Democracy:] An institution in which the whole is equal to the scum of the parts.
KEITH PRESTON The institutions of Churchianity are not Christianity. An institution is a good thing if it is secon...
OSWALD CHAMBERS An idea or institution may arise for one reason and be maintained for quite a different reason.
JOSEPH MCCABE An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 'Vogue' is a very beautiful magazine, an institution, and I learned so much working there.
CARINE ROITFELD A founder can carry an institution only so far, and then others have to step in, even the alumni. Th...
SHIV NADAR What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idi...
GEORGE ELIOT We try to target our examinations to the specific activities of an institution and those that repres...
BARBARA GRUNKEMEYER The Royal Academy of Dance is an institution that trains to a very high standard.
DARCEY BUSSELL We're an institution. We've been here for 20 years, as of April 3.
CARL JACOBY If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slave...
HILAIRE BELLOC It's more than a game. It's an institution.
THOMAS HUGHES This is an academic institution, the foundation of which is truth. People get failed at this school ...
BARBARA FAIRCHILD Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON While I believe in marriage as an institution, I am also petrified of it.
SHAHID KAPOOR Marriage is an institution and that's where a couple finish up.
LES DAWSON This is not a question of one man, but of an institution that needs to be reformed.
GUIDO TABELLINI It's an opportunity to draw the entire community together. Not to focus on a man, but to focus on th...
JUDI HENSLEY They can't be an island. By being part of the community, you help yourself as an institution. Others...
BOB HASTINGS The Council is being strengthened as an institution, and the citizens of the city will be better ser...
DICK DADEY It was an individual initiative. The tribe as an institution did not take the lead here.
BRUCE MACDONALD Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; suc...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU Nobody is bothered about an institution more than its alumni.
N. R. NARAYANA MURTHY Any man," she muttered, "who wanted to marry into the Hathaway family after this should be shut away...
LISA KLEYPAS The opening of the academy is a historic moment. It is the first such national institution that has ...
MAXWELL GAYLARD If you go into an academic institution with a clean slate, you are very likely to come out a liberal...
ANDREW BREITBART Delaware State has established itself as an institution of excellence in its own right and attracts ...
MICHAEL N. CASTLE One column of truth cannot hold an institution of ideas from falling into ignorance. It is wiser tha...
BRYANT H. MCGILL It was definitely an institution, a tradition. You never knew where the conversation was going to go...
KATHY LAWRENCE He's an institution, if you wanna know the truth. He's as good a person as you'll ever meet.
VANCE WALBERG You can never really go wrong if you take nature as an example.
CHRISTIAN DIOR The institution of Royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.
MARK TWAIN And one cannot discharge the duty of loyalty without the patient and an open minded study of the ins...
BAINBRIDGE COLBY the church was an international institution long before globalization.
SHANE CLAIBORNE It's an institution, it's a gathering place. It's a real part of the community.
BILL WOOD A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an i...
NEIL MACGREGOR It's an institution. It is where all politicians that are serious politicians make it a point to com...
CYNTHIA SAKULENZKI Any place that anyone can learn something useful from someone with experience is an educational inst...
AL CAPP Any place that anyone can learn something useful from someone with experience is an educational inst...
AL CAPP Trump University had neither a license nor a charter from New York State certifying it as an institu...
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN I feel that Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley is strong and on the right path for establishing an insti...
RAYMOND RODRIGUEZ Having a vendor say, 'This is a good learning experience,' is not the same thing as having them sold...
EILEEN WALSH Any man,” she muttered, “who wanted to marry into the Hathaway family after this should be shut ...
LISA KLEYPAS The issue that all of us face is that alumni love to have the institution frozen in amber. The truth...
GORDON GEE We think that allowing an institution like NSA to operate basically outside our laws is very dangero...
BILL SULZMAN What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the Na...
DEAN BAKOPOULOS Marriage is a natural and beautiful institution between a man and a woman. It's wrong for judges and...
RANDY THOMASSON A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE The biggest problem with the education system is that it does not teach sycophancy, which is invaria...
ANUJ SOMANY Having an institution like [the CDC] says something about our values.
MARY SHAPIRO Property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central insti...
DAVID FRIEDMAN An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond...
JOHN MARSHALL We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something m...
ERIC LIU The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of it...
LOUIS KAHN Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant p...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU Life is an audition.
THOMAS FLAJNIK - ANTICHIMERAPODAL Together, we will serve the nation, create a unique institution of higher learning and, with hard wo...
AL WEED Sadie was full of crap at the best of times, and in an institution where laxatives were traded like ...
JAMES DAWSON The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.
GEORGE SANTAYANA You don't do business with an institution. You do business with people.
DEBBIE FIELDS I've never heard of any other institution like this in Latin America or the world. It's really bizar...
DANIEL LEVY We are fortunate to have inherited an institution which we certainly should never have had the intel...
LORD ESHER Within the Times, there's a great deal of concern about how this is going to reflect on the Times as...
ALEX JONES Unfortunately, in this particular case, some of our initial communication played out in a way that w...
MIKE ALDEN You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a stud...
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN An image . . . is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is ...
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN I left that church with rich and royal hatred of the priest as a person, and a loathing for the chur...
EUGENE V. DEBS One of the most important things about this project is that it is a partnership. Our major goal as a...
TIM NELSON Discrimination is on its face wrong. Funding it with state tax dollars is unacceptable. We feel that...
CHRISTINA GILGOR In every civilized society, there is an established institution put in place to design laws that mak...
SUNDAY ADELAJA Obviously we want people to come and root us on, but it's kind of sad for an institution like the Le...
LON MILES Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic instit...
LEARNED HAND Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. True Religion is real...
ABHIJIT NASKAR I think it'd be useful for parents to know kind of what is the culture of an institution.
MARGARET SPELLINGS The reforms on the table really get to the meat of the matter, which is changing an institution envi...
EDWARD LUCK Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, ...
IVAN ILLICH I don't think it does. These are people who struggle with their life. The compound shows a very diff...
CAROLYN STRAUSS Sadly, it appears that the N.C. House of Representatives is for sale. It is an institution where eve...
FERRELL BLOUNT
More G.K. Chesterton
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G.K. CHESTERTON A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration ...
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G.K. CHESTERTON If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.
(on not perfectionism
to put things off)
.
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G.K CHESTERTON I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of
committees.
G.K CHESTERTON I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best
advice, and then going away and do...
G.K CHESTERTON How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you
win.
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G.K. CHESTERTON Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they...
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G.K. CHESTERTON The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
G.K. CHESTERTON I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible...
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G.K. CHESTERTON The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinar...
G.K. CHESTERTON Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of abo...
G.K. CHESTERTON Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relat...
G.K. CHESTERTON According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in m...
G.K. CHESTERTON Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
G.K. CHESTERTON A Second Childhood.”
When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
...
G.K. CHESTERTON If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despot...
G.K. CHESTERTON Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers bu...
G.K. CHESTERTON I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G.K. CHESTERTON A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G.K. CHESTERTON Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
G.K. CHESTERTON To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believi...
G.K. CHESTERTON Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are...
G.K. CHESTERTON Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roug...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
G.K. CHESTERTON Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely th...
G.K. CHESTERTON Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is sim...
G.K. CHESTERTON Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
G.K. CHESTERTON The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G.K. CHESTERTON A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
G.K. CHESTERTON There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
G.K. CHESTERTON When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are ...
G.K. CHESTERTON If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
G.K. CHESTERTON I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princes...
G.K. CHESTERTON The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman ...
G.K. CHESTERTON And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity c...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless...
G.K. CHESTERTON I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. Th...
G.K. CHESTERTON That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it...
G.K. CHESTERTON The man who kills a man kills a man.
The man who kills himself kills all men.
As far as he...
G.K. CHESTERTON The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.
G.K. CHESTERTON When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become c...
G.K. CHESTERTON The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
G.K. CHESTERTON We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
G.K. CHESTERTON But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore h...
G.K. CHESTERTON We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares...
G.K. CHESTERTON There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.
G.K. CHESTERTON Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. CHESTERTON It may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colors that there is brought forth upon the earth...
G.K. CHESTERTON It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. Now h...
G.K. CHESTERTON The Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of red wine, and a good cigar.
G.K. CHESTERTON A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror,...
G.K. CHESTERTON People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read mor...
G.K. CHESTERTON Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money...
G.K. CHESTERTON All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a...
G.K. CHESTERTON The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into th...
G.K. CHESTERTON Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G.K. CHESTERTON This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and cre...
G.K. CHESTERTON There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul...
G.K. CHESTERTON Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
G.K. CHESTERTON I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness double...
G.K. CHESTERTON ...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, ab...
G.K. CHESTERTON Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we hav...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.
G.K. CHESTERTON The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war wi...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a b...
G.K. CHESTERTON I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
G.K. CHESTERTON She(Joan of Arc) put her dreams and her sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be; she put her...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage t...
G.K. CHESTERTON Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would c...
G.K. CHESTERTON The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
G.K. CHESTERTON To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. CHESTERTON ... just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable...
G.K. CHESTERTON And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat t...
G.K. CHESTERTON Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you k...
G.K. CHESTERTON Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great...
G.K. CHESTERTON Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is th...
G.K. CHESTERTON I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist means a man who thinks a wal...
G.K. CHESTERTON In the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern ...
G.K. CHESTERTON The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. CHESTERTON We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksni...
G.K. CHESTERTON Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madn...
G.K. CHESTERTON If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer ...
G.K. CHESTERTON There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enou...
G.K. CHESTERTON But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... But the thing is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.
G.K. CHESTERTON No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerne...
G.K. CHESTERTON Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. M...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Thrift is poetic because it is creative.
G.K. CHESTERTON The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,...
G.K. CHESTERTON No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in off...
G.K. CHESTERTON When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
G.K. CHESTERTON In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
G.K. CHESTERTON All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...E...
G.K. CHESTERTON Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, wo...
G.K. CHESTERTON As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War—they might as well say that the...
G.K. CHESTERTON The paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings
G.K. CHESTERTON ..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a d...
G.K. CHESTERTON I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say ...
G.K. CHESTERTON To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. CHESTERTON If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ...
G.K. CHESTERTON It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by ...
G.K. CHESTERTON On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the...
G.K. CHESTERTON The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accide...
G.K. CHESTERTON I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its mea...
G.K. CHESTERTON [Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run...
G.K. CHESTERTON That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could ha...
G.K. CHESTERTON If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just becau...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is something sinister about putting a leprechaun in a workhouse. The only solid comfort is tha...
G.K. CHESTERTON Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some ...
G.K. CHESTERTON If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Eh?" said Sy...
G.K. CHESTERTON Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed...
G.K. CHESTERTON As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No...
G.K. CHESTERTON I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that ...
G.K. CHESTERTON How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
G.K. CHESTERTON The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens...
G.K. CHESTERTON No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for edu...
G.K. CHESTERTON A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should ...
G.K. CHESTERTON A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A mode...
G.K. CHESTERTON These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
G.K. CHESTERTON There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
G.K. CHESTERTON Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, b...
G.K. CHESTERTON There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over.
"There is," sai...
G.K. CHESTERTON He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of c...
G.K. CHESTERTON Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being ...
G.K. CHESTERTON We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,
G.K. CHESTERTON There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.
G.K. CHESTERTON We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practica...
G.K. CHESTERTON He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's wha...
G.K. CHESTERTON If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. CHESTERTON The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautifu...
G.K. CHESTERTON I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. CHESTERTON My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperat...
G.K. CHESTERTON The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. CHESTERTON Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but th...
G.K. CHESTERTON the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things...
G.K. CHESTERTON The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it ...
G.K. CHESTERTON