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Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so dam serious.

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
Seem
Serious
Seems
Dams
Sometimes
Frowning
Must
Bore
Believe
Bores
Thinking
Thinker
Americans

More quotes by Jacques Maritain

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Power without authority is tyranny.
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The day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her.
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The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.
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There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
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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.
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A true Christian is a man who never for a moment forgets what God has done for him in Christ and whose whole comportment and whose activity have their root in the sentiment of gratitude.
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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.
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The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.
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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.
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Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.
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Some truths are seen better through tears.
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It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
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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
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We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve
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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.
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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.
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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
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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.
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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 .
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