Quotes About Enlightenment

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

As a teenager, rather than setting myself on a course to pursue fame (quite common growing up in L.A., the entertainment capital of the world), happiness, fulfillment, and spiritual enlightenment (also quite common), I skipped right on to trying to be successful. 'Let's just get on with it,' I felt. 'Onward' became my motto.

In his later years, Ramakrishna took up residence at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, from where his radiance extended far, even beyond his death in 1886.

The more urbanized, the more educated, and even the more enlightened the world becomes, counterintuitively, the more politically unstable it becomes, too.*42 This is what techno-optimists and those who inhabit the world of fancy corporate gatherings are prone to miss: They wrongly equate wealth creation—and unevenly distributed wealth creation at that—with political order and stability.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. Origin Debated

Only when I do not search does the purpose become clear.

Vos creéis saberlo todo. Merlín se echó a reír: ?Al revés. Sé que no sé nada. El Caballero miró a Merlín con recelo. Sospechaba que el mago le estaba tendiendo una trampa: ?¿Cómo podéis decir que no sabéis nada, siendo como sois tan sabio? ?Eso es lo que me hace sabio ?respondió Merlín?. Saber «nada» significa no tener que demostrar que sé «algo».

There is no slavery but ignorance.

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science? Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear?

The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things

The company increased as light was let into the house. But

Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood—it fills the world with light. It cares nothing for heresy; it develops the mind, and enables man to answer his own prayers.

Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

In our era, just as in every transitional age, God seems dead, but it is really our Enlightenment culture that has died.

While Voltaire lived, Frederick of Prussia told him, "After your death, there will be no one to replace you"; when the philosopher was gone, the king said, "For my part, I am consoled by having lived in the age of Voltaire.

Voltaire had exercised the greatest intellectual influence on Catherine, and Diderot was the only one of the major philosophes she actually met, but it was in Friedrich Melchoir Grimm that the empress found a lifelong friend.

There is no greater burden than to be cursed with knowledge.

That Light "enlightens every man that comes into the world, and . . . strives with the children of men, and will continue to strive with them, until it brings them to a knowledge of the truth and the possession of the greater light and testimony of the Holy Ghost."15

It can be said that life's perhaps most fundamental dynamic is the attempt to move from a lower form of experience and consciousness to a higher (or deeper) level of consciousness.

No one has ever died, from an overexposure to education.

learn something, and grow wiser.