Jacques Maritain Quotes

For to love is to give what one is, his very being, in the most absolute, the most brazenly metaphysical, the least phenomenalizable sense of this word.

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

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.

It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.

The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.

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.

Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.

In loving things and the being in them man should rather draw things up to the human level than reduce humanity to their measure.

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

A community of free men cannot exist if its spiritual base is not solely law.

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

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

It is not possible to escape from the results of the irruption of faith into the structures of our knowledge.

What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.

The hope of the coming of a new Christian era in our civilization is to my mind a hope for a distant future, a very distant future.