Jacques Maritain Quotes

Metaphysics is a science.

There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

I'm very passionate about philosophy and religion.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

There are big questions science doesn't answer, such as why is there something rather than nothing? There can't be a scientific answer to that because it's the answer that precedes science.

Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand.

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradict ory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness .)

Aside from theology and sex there is really nothing to talk about.

Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.

Theology is a subject without an object

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

As a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith.

Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.

If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.

Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science, or complement of sciences, exclusively occupied with mind.

Philosophy treats of physics where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous... So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers.

It is possible to be a meta-physician without believing in a transcendent reality; for we shall see that many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors, rather than to a conscious desire on the part of their authors to go beyond the limits of experience.

In God alone, essence (what He is) and existence (that he is) coincide.