Hilaire Belloc Quotes

• The gentleman is generous and treats all men as his equals, especially those whom he feels to be inferior in rank and wealth.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Men, Gentleman, Language

  save quote report

• Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Political, World

  save quote report

• Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Memories, Reality, Rocks

  save quote report

• Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world, which will shake off the domination of Europeans - still nominally Christian - and reappear as the prime enemy of our civilization? The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Christian, Believe, Civilization

  save quote report

• When one remembers how the Catholic Church has been governed, and by whom, one realizes that it must have been divinely inspired to have survived at all.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Catholic, Church, Remember

  save quote report

• Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!

  Hilaire Belloc

  Laughter, Wine, Shining

  save quote report

• Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Rights, Long, Principles

  save quote report

• Coupled with Usury, Unrestricted Competition destroys the small man for the profit of the great and in so doing produces that mass of economically unfree citizens whose very political freedom comes in question because it has no foundation in any economic freedom, that is, any useful proportion of property to support it. Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Political

  save quote report

• When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Order

  save quote report

• When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Steps

  save quote report

• The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Liberty, Libertarian, Wealth

  save quote report

• Before the curse of statistics fell upon mankind we lived a happy, innocent life, full of merriment and go and informed by fairly good judgment.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Assessment, Statistics, Judgment

  save quote report

• The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Catholic, Church, Divinity

  save quote report

• Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Moving, Men

  save quote report

• The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Church, Defeated

  save quote report

• It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Suggestions, Population, Dull

  save quote report

• In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Lying, Night, Shadow

  save quote report

• We may not say to the poor: "You have a right to fight the rich merely because they are rich and in order to make yourselves less poor." We may say: "You have a right to fight to prevent the conditions of your life becoming inhuman," but we may not say, "You have a right to fight merely because you desire to have more and your opponent to have less."

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Fighting, Order

  save quote report

• Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Military, Fighting, Army

  save quote report

• It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant. . . . You will not be able to set up in a pagan or an heretical or a wholly indifferent society the institutions characteristic of economic freedom; you will not be able to curb competition which alone would be sufficient to destroy such freedom, nor pursue permanently and consecutively anyone part of the program. The thing must be done as a whole, and it can be done as a whole only by the ambient influence of Catholicism.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Competition, Would Be, Done

  save quote report

• And the men that were boys when I was a boy Shall sit and drink with me.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Boys, Men, Drink

  save quote report

• These are the advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind

  Hilaire Belloc

  Men, Advantage, Mankind

  save quote report

• Physicians of the utmost fame, Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no Cure for this Disease.'

  Hilaire Belloc

  Physicians, Disease, Fame

  save quote report

• Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfulls.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Pain, Business, Doubt

  save quote report

• I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Life, Travel, Journey

  save quote report

You May Also Like:

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Edward Gorey

Joseph Pearce

Maurice Baring

Vincent McNabb

John Henry Newman

Ronald Knox

Christopher Dawson