Jacques Maritain Quotes
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher and one of the architects of the twentieth-century revival of Thomism. After studies at the Sorbonne and a conversion to Catholicism with his wife Raissa, he reread Aquinas as a contemporary interlocutor and produced a long series of books on metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and political philosophy. The quotes below are attributed to Jacques Maritain, organized by topic.
Browse Jacques Maritain by topic
Jacques Maritain on God
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“Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.”
Integral Humanism, (1936, Notre Dame Edition) | p. 154. -
“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.
Jacques Maritain on Justice
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“Human rights are the rights of human beings as moral persons.”
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“The Rights of Man (1945). London: Geoffrey Bles, pp. 7–8.”
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.”
Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review , LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4.
Jacques Maritain on Knowledge
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“Distinguish in order to unite.”
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“The whole man must enter into philosophy, but only the intellect must do philosophy.”
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“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. -
“The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.”
Theonas: Conversations of a Sage(1921) [Sheed & Ward, 1933] | p. 77. -
“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. -
“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.
Jacques Maritain on Life
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“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. -
“Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review , LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4.”
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 supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive.”
Ransoming the Time(1941) | p. 288. -
“There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.”
True Humanism(1938) | p. xi.
Jacques Maritain on Love
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“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(1952) [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons] | p. 109. -
“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. -
“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.
Jacques Maritain on Mind
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“The thirst for poetry is one of the most spiritual thirsts in the human being.”
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“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.
Jacques Maritain on Nature
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“There is one human nature, common to all the diverse cultures of mankind.”
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“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.”
Scholasticism and Politics (1940)
Jacques Maritain on Politics
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“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 .”
The Twilight of Civilization (1939). London: Sheed & Ward, 1946, p. 41. -
“Scholasticism and Politics (1940)”
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 spiri
Jacques Maritain on Time
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“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) [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons] | p. 217. -
“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(1952) [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons] | p. 113.
Jacques Maritain on Truth
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Attributed to Jacques Maritain:
“The philosopher is the friend of being.”
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“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.”
Theonas: Conversations of a Sage(1921) [Sheed & Ward, 1933] | p. 9. -
“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.