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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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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
Jacques Maritain
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The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, that is to say, the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection, and is not perfected by what we shall learn to know as a scientific habit.
Jacques Maritain
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The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success.
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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When one's function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been said.
Jacques Maritain
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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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It has never been recommended to confuse loving with seeking to please... ...Salome pleased Herod's guests I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist... ...she certainly did not envelop him in her love.
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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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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The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
Jacques Maritain
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It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
Jacques Maritain
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The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy that without it there is no philosophy and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth.
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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There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
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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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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The aim of education is to guide young persons in the process through which they shape themselves as human persons-armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues-while at the same time conveying to them the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization in which they are involved.
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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Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Jacques Maritain
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A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.
Jacques Maritain