Enlightenment Quotes

Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

I'm very much an Enlightenment kind of guy.

The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.

You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.

Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.

If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter.

Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.

Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

I think the Enlightenment is leading us into a dark hole, really.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak.

The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.

God is not anything human. God is a force, God is chaos, God is unknown. God is terror and enlightenment at the same time.

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are.

Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.

Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.