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

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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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In loving things and the being in them man should rather draw things up to the human level than reduce humanity to their measure.
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It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
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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.
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Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.
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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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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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The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success.
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Everywhere in the world the industrial regime tends to make the unorganized or unorganizable individual, the pauper, into the victim of a kind of human sacrifice offered to the gods of civilization.
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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 equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.
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The tragedy of the modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in realizing democracy.
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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.
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Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it.
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There is no question that the language of felt thought must be quarried from our personal depths. Like the best gold, it does not lie on the surface.
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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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