Quotes About Enlightenment

those who travel the world hoping to get "blinded by the light" are often blind to the light that's all around them.

the works of Locke, Montesquieu, Hobbes, and Hume, as well as those of such reigning legal sages as Sir William Blackstone, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel von Pufendorf. He was especially taken with the jurist Emmerich de Vattel

Burr is said to have remarked, "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.

Some of Washington's religious style probably reflected an Enlightenment discomfort with religious dogma, but it also reflected his low-key personal style. He was sober and temperate in all things, distrusted zealotry, and would never have talked of hellfire or damnation. He would have shunned anything, such as communion, that might flaunt his religiosity. He never wanted to make a spectacle of his faith or trade on it as a politician.

We have abundant reason to rejoice that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition," President Washington wrote to one Baltimore church.26 "Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.

Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance.

If I 'ad known zen what I know now.

So I cast my lot with him—not the one who claimed wisdom, Confucius; or the one who claimed enlightenment, Buddha; or the one who claimed to be a prophet, Muhammad, but with the one who claimed to be God in human flesh. The one who declared, 'Before Abraham was born, I am'46  Ã¢â'¬â€and proved it.

The only knowledge that is worthwhile, writes Northrop Frye. is the knowledge that leafs to wisdom, for knowledge without wisdom is a body without life.

To affirm that contemporary tyranny cannot be adequately understood outside the classical frame of reference is to affirm that the classics were justified in their rejection of unlimited technical progress and universal enlightenment.

It's clear.

In many respects, the West has not recovered from the Middle Ages.

He was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness while everyone else was still asleep. —Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude." "Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

I know because I read. Might I suggest you try it?

I know because I read.

You know, Ethan, there are cultures on earth who believe that—under the right circumstances—a person can be separated from their inner spirit." "Inner spirit?" Rush repeated. "I mean the intangible life force that links us from this world to the next. The Byzantines, the Incans, certain Native American tribes, Enlightenment-era Rosicrucians, all had variant belief structures regarding such a thing—there were, and are, many others.

Enlightened Society is all about nurturing the human spirit - waking up to the goodness, kindness and strength that we already have.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

The goal of society in general is to succeed in the world, whereas the goal of enlightenment is to transcend beyond it.

The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.

We've been proceeding so long on the plane of consciousness, we don't realize we are spiritual beings. Our minds, our senses, and the society around us all say, "Come on, you're getting into fantasy.