We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.
Jacques MaritainRead
Since science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Science can only analyze observable phenomena and does not address existential or moral questions.
Jacques Maritain emphasizes that while science excels at understanding and measuring the physical world, it cannot provide answers to deeper existential, ethical, or metaphysical questions. This limitation suggests that human life requires perspectives beyond empirical evidence, indicating that metaphysics and ethics lie outside the purview of scientific inquiry.
Themes
SciencePhilosophyEthicsMetaphysicsHuman Life
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the limits of scientific inquiry, this quote can help illustrate the necessity of philosophical thought.
More from Jacques Maritain
All quotes →God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth
Jacques MaritainRead
Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon , the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.
Jacques MaritainRead
We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve
Jacques MaritainRead
Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself.
Jacques MaritainRead
The aim of education is to guide young persons in the process _x000D_ through which they shape themselves as human persons-armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues-while at the same time conveying to them the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization in which they are involved.
Jacques MaritainRead
Similar quotes
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
Vladimir NabokovRead
To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.
George Gaylord SimpsonRead
In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth, _x000D_ And all you behold, though it appears without, _x000D_ It is within, in your imagination, _x000D_ Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.
William BlakeRead
Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.
Walter BenjaminRead
Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.
Peter SengeRead
How quickly passes away the glory of this world.
Thomas A KempisRead