History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

- Etienne Gilson

Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of…

- Etienne Gilson

Why are there organized beings? Why is there something rather than nothing? Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He is w…

- Etienne Gilson

To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement of the universe

- Etienne Gilson

Faith comes to intelligence as a light that overflows it with joy and inspires it with a certitude that does away with question.

- Etienne Gilson

Philosophy always buries its undertakers.

- Etienne Gilson

Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys them as beautiful. For all that whic…

- Etienne Gilson

If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors subst…

- Etienne Gilson

Let us ... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that…

- Etienne Gilson