We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
Interpretation
The quote critiques those who label others as bigots for holding firm beliefs after deep thought.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote highlights the irony of how society often dismisses individuals who have deeply considered their beliefs, branding them as bigots or dogmatic. It emphasizes that rigorous thought and commitment to one's conclusions can sometimes lead to misinterpretation by others who may not understand the depth of that reasoning, suggesting that true understanding requires openness to different perspectives rather than quick judgments.
In practice
In a debate about freedom of speech, one might say, 'As Chesterton pointed out, we must be careful not to label those with firm views as bigots without understanding their perspective.'
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?
What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.
This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it.
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.
Freedom is a very great reality, but it means above all things, freedom from lies.
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