Jacques Maritain

"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."

"In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiritual soul, and the latter is in him a principle of creative unity, of independence and of freedom."

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

"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 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."

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

"A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me."

"We have just seen that perfection and contemplation imply each other by reason of love which is at once the essence of perfecton and “the source, the execize and the end” of contemplation. One can also show this mutual implication by the stressing the fact that under the regime of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the state proper to perfection and to contemplation all at once. Saint Thomas teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for salvation, because we are too weak all by ourselves always to use as we should even the theological virtues and the infused moral virtues. […] For, as saint Bonavenure tell us, “the gifts immediately dispose one to contemplation”."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive."

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

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

"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."

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

"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 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 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."

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

"The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher."

"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."

"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."

"It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist."

"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 day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her."

"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."