Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain (18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher, and was one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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• There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.
  • True Humanism (1938), p. xi

• In loving things and the being in them man should rather draw things up to the human level than reduce humanity to their measure.
  • True Humanism (1938), p. xv

• Thus society is born, as something required by nature, and (because this nature is human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will, and freely consented to. Man is a political animal, which means that the human person craves political life, communal life, not only with regard to the family community, but with regard to the civil community.
  • The Rights of Man (1945). London: Geoffrey Bles, pp. 7–8

• 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.
  • “Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review, LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4

• Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment.
  • The Range of Reason (1952). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 106

• 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.
  • The Range of Reason (1952), p. 217

• The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.
  • Man and the State (1951), p. 179

• What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.
  • Degrees of Knowledge(1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 4.

• It is enough that things exist for God to be unavoidable. Let us but grant to a bit of moss or the smallest ant its due nature as an ontological reality, and we can no longer escape the terrifying hand that made us.
  • Degrees of Knowledge(1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 116.

• Things are opaque to us, and we are opaque to ourselves.
  • Degrees of Knowledge(1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 117.

• 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.
  • An Essay on Christian Philosophy (1955), p. 17.

• 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.
  • An Essay on Christian Philosophy (1955), p. 51.

• It is not possible to escape from the results of the irruption of faith into the structures of our knowledge.
  • Science and Wisdom(1954), p. 109.

• The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
  • Science and Wisdom(1954), p. 207.

• 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.
  • The Peasant of the Garonne,(1968) p 9.

• It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist.
  • The Peasant of the Garonne,(1968) p. 89.

• 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.
  • The Peasant of the Garonne,(1968) p. 91.

• 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 Peasant of the Garonne,(1968) p. 94.

• 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.
  • The Peasant of the Garonne, (1968)pp. 147-148.

• A community of free men cannot exist if its spiritual base is not solely law.
  • Christianity and Democracy, (1943), p. 43.

• Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it.
  • Christianity and Democracy, (1943), p. 49.

• To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.
  • Freedom in the Modern World, (1933, Notre Dame Edition), p. 6.

• Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
  • Integral Humanism, (1936, Notre Dame Edition), p. 154.

• Nothing is more vain than to seek to unite men by a philosophic minimum.
  • Integral Humanism, (1936, Notre Dame Edition), p. 262

• 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 phenomena.
  • The Range of Reason, (1942), p. 106.

• To redeem creation the saint wages war on the entire fabric of creation, with the bare weapons of truth and love.
  • The Range of Reason, (1942), p. 109.

• 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.
  • The Range of Reason, (1942), p. 113.

• 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."
  • The Range of Reason, (1942), p. 137.

• There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.
  • Ransoming the Time, (1941), p. 14.

• The supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive.
  • Ransoming the Time, (1941), p. 288.

• A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.
  • On the Use of Philosophy (1961), p. 5.

• In each of us there dwells a mystery, and that mystery is the human personality.
  • The Rights of Man and Natural Law, (1943), p. 2.