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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.

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
Never
Philosophy
Stumbling
Modern
Served
Hand
Construction
Point
Wherever
Free
Block
Fact
Western
Facts
Christianity
Hands
Instead

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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 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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Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
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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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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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Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.
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We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve
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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 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 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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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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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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The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
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There is no place in the world but contains some trace of God.
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To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
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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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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 day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her.
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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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Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.
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