Quote

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
Firsts
Necessarily
Reverse
Proclaims
First
Commitment
Phenomenon
Inconsistency
Must
Atheism
Contemporary
Gear
Full
Starts
Vanish
Religious
Atheist
Gears
Religion
Absolutes
Blown

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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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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 tragedy of the modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in realizing democracy.
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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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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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Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.
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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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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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The love of Americans for their country is not an indulgent, it is an exacting and chastising love they cannot tolerate its defects.
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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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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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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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A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
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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.
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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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It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
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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.
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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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