“Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.”

"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: Let me explain a little: Certain things are bad so far as they go, such as pain, and no one, not even a lunatic, calls a tooth-ache good in itself; but a knife which cuts clumsily and with difficulty is called a bad knife, which it certainly is not. It is only not so good as other knives to which men have grown accustomed. A knife is never bad except on such rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientifically planted in the middle of one's back. The coarsest and bluntest knife which ever broke a pencil into pieces instead of sharpening it is a good thing in so far as it is a knife. It would have appeared a miracle in the Stone Age. What we call a bad knife is a good knife not good enough for us; what we call a bad hat is a good hat not good enough for us; what we call bad cookery is good cookery not good enough for us; what we call a bad civilization is a good civilization not good enough for us. We choose to call the great mass of the history of mankind bad, not because it is bad, but because we are better. This is palpably an unfair principle. Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black." by G. K. Chesterton?
G. K. Chesterton photo
G. K. Chesterton 229
English mystery novelist and Christian apologist 1874–1936

Related quotes

Arundhati Roy photo
Robert Hayden photo

“Standing to America, bringing home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.”

Robert Hayden (1913–1980) American writer and academic

Middle Passage (lines 15-16), from Collected Poems (1985)

Marco Girolamo Vida photo

“I sing the form of war, the bloodless plain,
Armies of ivory, and a mock campaign;
How two bold kings in different armour veil'd,
One black, one white, for conquest fought the field.”

Ludimus effigiem belli, simulataque veris Praelia, buxo acies fictas, et ludicra regna, Ut gemini inter se reges albusque, nigerque Pro laude oppositi certent bicoloribus armis.

Vida's Game of Chess https://books.google.com/books?id=IGMIAAAAQAAJ, opening lines
Compare:
Of armies on the chequer'd field array'd,
And guiltless war in pleasing form display'd;
When two bold kings contend with vain alarms,
In ivory this, and that in ebon arms.
William Jones, Caïssa; Or, The Game of Chess.
Scacchia Ludus (1527)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
John Masefield photo
Ellen Kushner photo
Terry Eagleton photo

“Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 2010s, Why Marx Was Right (2011), Chapter 6, p. 134

Cyril Connolly photo

“So wrote Pater, calling an art-for-art's sake muezzin to the faithful from the topmost turret of the ivory tower.”

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 5: Anatomy of Dandyism (p. 37)

Alison Bechdel photo
Philip Roth photo

Related topics