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We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve
Jacques Maritain
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of serving truth itself rather than bending it to our needs.

Jacques Maritain's quote suggests that truth is not merely a tool for our own purposes but a fundamental concept that we should honor and adhere to. In striving to serve truth, we elevate our understanding and commitment to reality, rather than distorting it to fit our desires or objectives. This approach fosters a more profound relationship with knowledge, humility, and authenticity.

Themes

TruthServePhilosophyAuthenticityKnowledge

In practice

Example use cases

During a seminar on ethics, this quote can emphasize the importance of integrity in research.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Quote by Jacques Maritain | QuoteProject