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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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Jacques Maritain
Age: 90 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 18
Died: 1973
Died: April 28
Diplomat
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Writer
Paris
France
Light
Return
Doe
Shall
Perfected
Common
Fundamentally
Upon
Scientific
Learn
Intellect
Natural
Reflection
Science
Critical
Sense
Habit

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A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
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There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
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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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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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At each epoch of history the world was in a hopeless state, and at each epoch of history the world muddled through at each epoch the world was lost, and at each epoch it was saved.
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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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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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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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Some truths are seen better through tears.
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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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Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
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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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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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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 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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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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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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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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Power without authority is tyranny.
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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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