Quote

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.

Jacques Maritain

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacques Maritain
Age: 90 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 18
Died: 1973
Died: April 28
Diplomat
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Writer
Paris
France
Devotion
Atheist
Absolutes
Absolute
Abortive
Saint
Revolutionist
Time
Authentic
Mistaken
Sincerity

More quotes by Jacques Maritain

Image
A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
Jacques Maritain
Image
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Jacques Maritain
Image
The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
Jacques Maritain
Image
The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.
Jacques Maritain
Image
Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.
Jacques Maritain
Image
There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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
Image
Some truths are seen better through tears.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain
Image
Power without authority is tyranny.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain
Image
The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.
Jacques Maritain
Image
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.
Jacques Maritain