Jacques Maritain Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

A man of courage flees forward in the midst of new things.

Power without authority is tyranny.

To redeem creation the saint wages war on the entire fabric of creation, with the bare weapons of truth and love.

The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.

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.

Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.

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.

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.

What makes man most unhappy is to be deprived not of that which he had, but of that which he did not have, and did not really know.

There is no place in the world but contains some trace of God.

Nothing is more vain than to seek to unite men by a philosophic minimum.

To philosophize man must put his whole soul into play, in much the same manner that to run he must use his heart and lungs.

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.

I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.

Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment.

It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.

It is implanted in the Christian soul, by the side of the running waters, under the sky of the theological virtues, amid the breaths of the seven gifts of the Spirit. It is natural for it to bear Christian fruit.

The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.

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.

The more the poet grows, the deeper the level of creative intuition descends into the density of his soul. Where formerly he could be moved to song, he can do nothing now, he must dig deeper.

Things are opaque to us, and we are opaque to ourselves.

There are absolute atheists ... Absolute atheism is in no way a mere absence of belief in God. It is rather a refusal of God, a fight against God, a challenge to God.

It is necessary that the object that the artist is shaping, whether it be a vase of clay or a fishing boat, be significant of something other than itself. This object must be a sign as well as an object; a meaning must animate it, and make it say more than it is.