A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

Chesterton’s aphorism contrasts passive conformity with active moral and intellectual vitality. To “go with the stream” is effortless: anything inert—ideas, institutions, or people who have surrendered judgment—can be carried along by prevailing fashion. To “go against it” requires life in the fullest sense: energy, conscience, and the capacity to choose resistance over ease. The line is often invoked to defend principled dissent, suggesting that opposition is not mere contrariness but evidence of inner animation. It also implies a critique of modernity’s tendency to equate progress with whatever direction the crowd is already moving.