All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as used by Alston Chase for the epigraph of Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park (1986).
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G.K. Chesterton
One reply on “G.K. Chesterton”
The passage that you quote first appeared in “The Eternal Revolution”, chapter 7 of Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy [1908].
Chesterton said something rather more perspicacious in a later newspaper column:
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.” (Illustrated London News 19 April 1924)