When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.

The line is widely circulated as a Chesterton quotation, but researchers have not located it verbatim in Chesterton’s published works. The earliest close match appears in a 1937 Chesterton biography by Émile Cammaerts, where Cammaerts summarizes (rather than quotes) an idea associated with Chesterton’s Father Brown stories: rejecting belief in God can lead some people to adopt superstitions or other ungrounded beliefs. Later, Malcolm Muggeridge repeatedly presented a fuller, punchier version as something Chesterton “once remarked,” which helped cement the attribution despite shifting wording.

The claim is that abandoning a central religious commitment does not automatically produce skepticism or rational restraint; instead, people may still feel a need to believe and can become susceptible to alternative, less disciplined beliefs.

The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.

When men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.

When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.

When men stop believing in God, it isn’t that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.