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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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Jacques Maritain
Age: 90 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 18
Died: 1973
Died: April 28
Diplomat
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Writer
Paris
France
Faith
Absolute
Internals
Away
Catholic
Internal
Necessarily
Reverse
Proclaims
Firsts
Commitment
Phenomenon
Inconsistency
First
Atheism
Contemporary
Gear
Must
Full
Starts
Vanish
Religious
Atheist
Gears
Religion
Absolutes
Blown

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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.
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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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There is no place in the world but contains some trace of God.
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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.
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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 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.
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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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Some truths are seen better through tears.
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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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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
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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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Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.
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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.
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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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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.
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A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
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Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
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There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
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