Jacques Maritain

Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.

A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.

Power without authority is tyranny.

Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.

The poet knows himself only on the condition that things resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, they and he come forth together out of sleep.

I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.

We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.

To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.

The great and admirable strength of America consists in this, that America is truly the American people.