Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. 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. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
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Tremendous Trifles (1909), XVII: "The Red Angel"
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Variant: Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
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Earliest known attribution is an epigraph in Neil Gaiman, Coraline (2004)Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Chevalier, Albert
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