Neil Gaiman and his dog, Cabal. Photo by Kyle Cassidy.
I need to correct something. The quote at the top of this webpage–the source of the name for this blog–has been misattributed.
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
The above is not a quote by G. K. Chesterton but Neil Gaiman. It is from his 2002 novel, Coraline. This quote is apparently often misattributed to Mr. Chesterton because the sentiment is his. Here is Mr. Chesterton’s real quote on the topic:
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.
Mr. Gaiman was a fan of Mr. Chesterton’s works in his youth and rephrased the sentiment in his 2002 novel. But the actual quote used for this blog is Gaiman’s.
I suppose it’s one of those quotes that’s simply easy to misattribute like the famous “Play it again, Sam” from the movie Casablanca. That exact wording doesn’t appear in the movie though many people who’ve seen the film will swear it is. If you watch the film, you’ll see that it is in fact not phrased that way.
So, what do I mean by The Golden Rule of Apologetics? It’s a phrase I heard from a podcast I subscribe to called I Didn’t Know That! Perhaps you’ve heard of the Golden Rule often stated as:
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
The apologetics version is:
Treat other people’s arguments as you would have them treat your own.
In this instance, they both mean attributing the quote to the right person. So to Mr. Gaiman I would like to say the following:
I’m sorry for any trouble this has caused. I really love the quote and wish I’d had it correct from the beginning. I hope you can forgive my error.
I was alerted to the problem while searching online when I came upon a quote page at Goodreads. It had the quote but a different attribution. I was confused until I noticed the tag, misattributed-to-g-k-chesterton. So I researched the matter, discovered the truth, and wrote this post.
Personally, I know what it feels like to be misunderstood and I hate that feeling. I imagine being misquoted or misattributed is similar. And as an aspiring writer, I would hate for something I wrote to be misattributed so I must correct this error. Again, my apologies.
One more thing. Apologetics, unlike many might think, has nothing to do with making an apology. Lest I unintentionally reinforce this common misunderstanding while trying to right a different wrong, I feel I must explain it too.
Apologetics is “the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of information [and logical argumentation]. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists.” (Source: Wikipedia) It is an irony that this post is about an apology. Nothing more. But the podcast I recently listened to was about the Golden Rule of Apologetics, not merely the Golden Rule, so my source for the title of the post is the apologetic version of the rule. I hope that’s clear.
Dragons Can Be Beaten 