Jacques Maritain Quotes

Quotes about:

• We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve

  Jacques Maritain

  Needs

  48 Copy quote

• Some truths are seen better through tears.

  Jacques Maritain

  Tears

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Civilization, Aim Of Education

  39 Copy 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

  Faith, Religious, Atheist

  Jacques Maritain (1966). “A Maritain Reader: Selected Writings”

  78 Copy quote

• Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.

  Jacques Maritain

  Thank You, Thankful, Gratitude

  63 Copy quote

• Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself.

  Jacques Maritain

  Dream, Art, Men

  23 Copy quote

• Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.

  Jacques Maritain

  Needs, Emptiness, Faster

  55 Copy quote

• 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 .

  Jacques Maritain

  Philosophy, Political, Being True

  "The Twilight of Civilization". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. 41), 1939.

  46 Copy quote

• The first step to be taken by everyone who wishes to act morally is to decide not to act according to the general customs and doings of his fellow-men.

  Jacques Maritain

  Taken, Men, Wish

  "The Range of Reason". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. 137), 1952.

  38 Copy quote

• In each of us there dwells a mystery, and that mystery is the human personality.

  Jacques Maritain

  Personality, Mystery, Humans

  Jacques Maritain (2012). “Christianity and Democracy, the Rights of Man and Natural Law”, p.65, Ignatius Press

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• Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.

  Jacques Maritain

  Men, Intellectual, Desire

  Jacques Maritain (2015). “Approaches to God”, p.72, Paulist Press

  23 Copy quote

• Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.

  Jacques Maritain

  Faith, Love Is, Men

  40 Copy quote

• God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth

  Jacques Maritain

  Religious, Art, Catholic

  Jacques Maritain, Jean Cocteau (2014). “Art and Faith: Letters between Jacques Maritain and Jean Cocteau”, p.47, Open Road Media

  57 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jacques Maritain

  Mean, Power, Government

  Jacques Maritain (1951). “Man and the State”, p.126, CUA Press

  9 Copy quote

• A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

  Jacques Maritain

  Business, Science, Ideas

  26 Copy quote

• The tragedy of the modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in realizing democracy.

  Jacques Maritain

  Democracy, Tragedy, Modern

  38 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jacques Maritain

  Christian, Gratitude, Men

  12 Copy quote

• To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.

  Jacques Maritain

  Essence, Intellectual

  "Freedom in the Modern World". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. 6), 1933.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Maritain

  Men, Desire, Heroism

  "True Humanism". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. xi), 1938.

  14 Copy quote

• Since science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion.

  Jacques Maritain

  Mean, Science, Men

  27 Copy quote

• God's love causes the beauty of what He loves, our love is caused by the beauty of what we love.

  Jacques Maritain

  Beauty, Love Is, Our Love

  Jacques Maritain (2007). “Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays”, p.31, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jacques Maritain

  Sacrifice, Technology, Civilization

  40 Copy quote

• Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it.

  Jacques Maritain

  Inspiration, Mind, Doe

  Jacques Maritain (2012). “Christianity and Democracy, the Rights of Man and Natural Law”, p.36, Ignatius Press

  32 Copy quote

• The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success.

  Jacques Maritain

  Artist, Doe, Please

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• There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.

  Jacques Maritain

  World, Rooms, Poet

  "Ransoming the Time". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. 14), 1941.

  24 Copy quote

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