QUOTATION: The Immortality of the Soul

A spiritual soul cannot be corrupted, since it possesses no matter; it cannot be disintegrated, since it has no substantial parts; it cannot lose its individual unity, since it is self-subsisting, nor its internal energy, since it contains within itself all the sources of its energies. The human soul cannot die. Once it exists, it cannot disappear; it will necessarily exist forever, endure without end. Thus philosophic reason is able to prove the immortality of the human soul in a demonstrative manner.

--Jacques Maritain

QUOTATION: Acting Morally

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.

--Jacques Maritain, Range of Reason

QUOTATION: Atheism

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 phenomenon.

--Jacques Maritain, The Meaning of Contemporary Atheism

QUOTATION: The Contradiction That is Atheism

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 phenomenon.

--Jacques Maritain

QUOTATION: The Irrationalism of Rationalism

Man, looking for complete emancipation, undertook to reduce everything to the level of reason. And in the end he comes to renounce the real; he no longer dares to use ideas to adhere to being; he forbids himself to know anything beyond the sensible fact and the phenomenon of consciousness; he dissolves every object of thought in a great flowing jelly called Becoming or Evolution; he considers himself a barbarian if he does not suspect every first principle and every rational demonstration, of naïveté; he replaces the effort of thought and logical discernment by a certain refined play of instinct, imagination, intuitive thrills, and visceral emotions; he no longer dares to judge.

--Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, 1958

QUOTATION: The Church and Her Authority

When we speak of the Church—allow me this parenthesis—let us think of what she truly is. Let us not have an attenuated conception of her; let us not picture to ourselves a mere spiritual administration. Let us remember that she is herself a mystery, that she is the Mystical Body of Christ, a living person, at once divine and human, whose head is Christ and all of whose members the Holy Ghost joins together, the great Contemplative who aspires to beget all men unto eternal life, and all of whose movements—so far as the Church herself is concerned (whatever the human frailty of individuals may be)—proceed from divine wisdom and the most pure gifts of grace. We shall not then bargain over the terms of our allegiance, we shall not follow her like peevish children who have to be dragged along; we shall understand that her doctrinal authority is not limited to defining solemnly what one cannot deny without being a heretic, but extends, on the contrary, according to all the degrees and all the nuances that what one calls the ordinary magisterium of the Church admits of in the tone of its voice and the authority of its affirmations, to all that concerns the integrity of faith in souls.

--Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, 1958

QUOTATION: Atheism Must Be Destroyed By Love

Under penalty of death civilization will have to overcome atheism and free itself of its inspiration. This cannot be done by external means of pressure, nor will the finest propaganda serve to achieve it. The workings of reason ─ deep and thorough intellectual enlightenment ─ are necessary. But first of all the testimony of love is needed.

--Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason

QUOTATION: How to Get Rid of Atheism

If it is true that absolute atheism is primarily the fruit and condemnation of practical atheism, and its reflected image in the mirror of divine wrath, then it must be said that the cardinal prerequisite for getting rid of absolute atheism is first to get rid of practical atheism. A decorative Christianity is henceforth not enough. A living Christianity is necessary to the world. Faith must be actual, practical, existential faith. To believe in God must mean to live in such a manner that life could not possibly be lived if God did not exist. For the practical believer, gospel justice, gospel attentiveness to everything human must inspire not only the deeds of the saints, but the structure and institutions of common life, and must penetrate to the depths of terrestrial existence.

--Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason

QUOTATION: Doubt

To live in a state of doubt is a highly civilized attitude as regards the infinite potentialities and future constructions of science in its deciphering of phenomena. But to live in a state of doubt as regards, not phenomena, but the ultimate realities the knowledge of which is a natural possibility, privilege, and duty for human intelligence, is to live more miserably than animals, which at least tend with instinctive and buoyant certitude toward the ends of their ephemeral life.

--Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads

QUOTATION: Sovereignty

In the eyes of s a sound political philosophy there is no sovereignty that is, no natural and inalienable right to transcendent or separate supreme power in political society. Neither the prince nore the king nor the emperor were really sovereign, though they bore the sword and the attributes of sovereignty. Nor is the state sovereign; nor are even the people sovereign. God alone is sovereign.

--Jacques Maritain, Man and the State