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There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.

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
Heroic
Desires
Common
Less
Desire
Nothing
Men
Life
Heroism

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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
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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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The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
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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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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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Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
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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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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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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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Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.
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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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It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
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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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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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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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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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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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Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.
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