“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” G.K. Chesterton, master of the aphorism, wrote those words in 1910 in “What’s Wrong With the World.”
Some readers interpret Chesterton’s adage as encouraging shoddy work or mediocre performance, but this analysis misses the mark by a long shot. In the chapter in which this sentence appears, Chesterton is defending the amateur against the professional, advocating specifically for the rearing of children by amateurs—in this case, mothers—as opposed to professionals like our modern day care workers.
