Chesterton is the great modernmaster of the aphorisms and these jottings show that sharp and penetrating verbal formulas came as naturally to him as to anyone who has ever written in the English language. But they also demonstrate how a writer with definite religious, political, and philosophical convictions, the kind of person often thoughtlessly derided as dogmatic or doctrinaire, can instantaneously produce the most witty and flexible commentary on almost any subject placed before him... Very little, if anything ever shut down Chesterton's brain. If he took the trouble to record his own reactions to a thinker like Jackson, it was out of true curiosity and charity towards everything human, even human folly. We are fortunate that this text has resurfaced and can now give us a closer appreciacion for that clear-sighted charity in action. The names and causes have changed a bit since Chesterton confronted them, but these aphorisms are a living guide to much that is still very much with us."
-Robert Royal

"In the hand-written reflections which experts feel constitute a text in their own right, Chesterton demolishes Jackson's Shavian analysis of society."
- The London Times