Quotes About Enlightened

Craftmasonry itself came to an abrupt end in the beginning of the eighteenth century to be replaced by Freemasonry which tragically developed both an enlightened and a sinister stream. The enlightened stream inspired the writing of the American Constitution while the black adepts misused their occult knowledge for financial and political gain.

Buddhism is centered on the principle of two truths, the absolute truth and the relative truth. The absolute is that the true nature of our minds and of the universe is enlightened, peaceful, and perfect. By the true nature of the mind, Nyingma Buddhism means the union of awareness and openness.

Invincible ignorance could not be enlightened; and

There are professors, Plantinga drily notes, who have left faculty meetings feeling more enlightened by what they said than by what they heard!

all he wanted was toleration, and by the enlightened use of the dispensing power to be the true father of all his people.

Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go in to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.

My parents were hippies. They met at an ashram, where they were studying how to be enlightened.

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.

Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.

To assert that military history suggested that wars broke out because bad men, in fear or in pride, sought material advantage or status, or because sometimes good but naive men had done too little to deter them, was understandably seen as antithetical to a more enlightened understanding of human nature.

In dealing with those who share his bed, the enlightened ruler may enjoy their beauty but should not listen to their special pleas.

These, of course, are far more enlightened times, when it is only acceptable to believe that not being a Christian is likely to mean one is a criminal only if one is a Muslim (or at least so we've been assured by people who claim to know such things)

This was due to the intervention of a benevolent ruler, King Sejong, who in 1403 issued an extraordinary decree, which sounds enlightened even today and must have been extremely so at the time. 'To govern well,' he said, 'it is necessary to spread knowledge of the laws and the books, so as to satisfy reason and to reform men's evil nature; in this way peace and order may be maintained.

It strikes me as an interesting paradox that a Buddha-an enlightened one-would be unable to figure it out, even after four-and-a-half years, that he had become enlightened. Fat had become totally bogged down in his enormous exegesis, trying futilely to determine what had happened to him. He resembled more a hit-and-run accident victim than a Buddha.

These modern so-called ministers of God speak all things nice. . . . There is not any hell and there is not any devil and there is not any judgment of God. . . . In our enlightened and sophisticated day

Madison is a very enlightened, idealized Midwestern place, and the people there are friendly.

He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi] Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.

For those who struggle with anti-pagan prejudices and stereotypes, Humanist Paganism might be a powerful educational tool. It can show that a pagan can be a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and enlightened person, and that a pagan culture can be artistically vibrant, environmentally conscious, intellectually stimulating, and socially just.

In the contemporary world, we think of politeness as surface behavior, like frosting - it's sweet and attractive and finishes off the cake. But 19th century nobility and the enlightened thinkers and stoics before them viewed manners in a very different way. To them, manners are an outward expression of an inward struggle.

In my own lifetime I've seen the apotheosis of greed as a virtue, and brutal insensitivity become enlightened self interest. We may do as well as all but a few countries but that scarcely makes us a Christian nation except to those who bathe in patriotic gore out of habit and stupidity. Neither the emperor and consorts nor the citizenry is wearing the sacramental clothing it chooses to think it is wearing. A simple, private reading of the Gospels would tell them so.

We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes," Lionel Trilling once wrote. "Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.")

I was hoping that you would instruct me in the nature of piety and impiety; and then I might have cleared myself of Meletus and his indictment. I would have told him that I had been enlightened by Euthyphro, and had given up rash innovations and speculations, in which I indulged only through ignorance, and that now I am about to lead a better life.

After all, a society with such an enlightened tolerance of corruption and savagery needed to bear down hard on minor offenses to convince itself that it still had standards.

There's not the slightest blemish on his reputation. He's an enlightened progressive lawman