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We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve

Jacques Maritain

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Jacques Maritain
Age: 90 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 18
Died: 1973
Died: April 28
Diplomat
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Writer
Paris
France
Serve
Truth
Need
Needs

More quotes by Jacques Maritain

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God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth
Jacques Maritain
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Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.
Jacques Maritain
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Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomenon.
Jacques Maritain
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There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
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The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.
Jacques Maritain
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In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block.
Jacques Maritain
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Power without authority is tyranny.
Jacques Maritain
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At each epoch of history the world was in a hopeless state, and at each epoch of history the world muddled through at each epoch the world was lost, and at each epoch it was saved.
Jacques Maritain
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The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.
Jacques Maritain
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Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.
Jacques Maritain
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A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain
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Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.
Jacques Maritain
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Some truths are seen better through tears.
Jacques Maritain
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With all his sincerity and devotion, the authentic, absolute atheist is after all only an abortive saint, and at the same time, a mistaken revolutionist.
Jacques Maritain
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There is no place in the world but contains some trace of God.
Jacques Maritain
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The tragedy of the modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in realizing democracy.
Jacques Maritain
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The poet knows himself only on the condition that things resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, they and he come forth together out of sleep.
Jacques Maritain
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To redeem creation the saint wages war on the entire fabric of creation, with the bare weapons of truth and love.
Jacques Maritain
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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
Jacques Maritain
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If it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftist it must simply be true .
Jacques Maritain