Thomism Quotes

“Any time you feel the desire to eat a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, commit adultery,
avoid confessing your sins, or hate your boss, your concupiscible passions are stirring.”
― Taylor R. Marshall, Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages: The Layman's Quick Guide to Thomism

“In periods when shallow speculation is rife, one might think that metaphysics would shine forth, at least, by the brilliance of its modest reserve. But the very age that is unaware of the majesty of metaphysics, likewise overlooks its poverty. Its majesty? It is wisdom. Its poverty? It is human science.”
― Jacques Maritain

“Now nobody will begin to understand Thomas philosophy, or indeed Catholic philosophy, who does not realize that the primary and fundamental part of it is entirely the praise of Life, the praise of Being, the praise of God as the creator of the world.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Philosophically literate anthropomorphism is exactly what one would expect of any worldview which affirms that human beings are made in the image of God.

(from The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers)”
― Eleanore Stump

“If the citizens themselves devote their life to matters of trade, the way will be opened to many vices. Since the foremost tendency of tradesmen is to make money, greed is awakened in the hearts of the citizens through the pursuit of trade. The result is that everything in the city will bcome venal; good faith will be destroyed and the way opened to all kinds of trickery; each one will work only for his own profit, despising the public good; the cultivation of virtue will fail since honor, virtue's reward, will be bestowed upon the rich. Thus, in such a city, civic life will necessarily be corrupted. (On Kingship II, 3)”
― Thomas Aquinas

“I have pointed out that mere modern free-thought has left everything in a fog, including itself. The assertion that thought is free led first to the denial that will is free; but even about that there was no real determination among the Determinists. In practice, they told men that they must treat their will as free as though it was not free. In other words, Man must live a double life; which is exactly the old heresy of Tiger of Brabant about the Double Mind. In other words, the nineteenth century left everything in chaos; and the importance of Thomas to the twentieth century is that it may give us back a cosmos. We can give here only the rudest sketch of how Aquinas, like Agnostics, beginning in the cosmic cellars, yet climbed to the cosmic towers.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The defect we see, in what is, is simply that it is not all that is. God is more actual even than Man; more actual even than Matter; for God with all His powers at every instant is immortally in action.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas