Enlightenment Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

I'm very much an Enlightenment kind of guy.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

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.

I don't believe that human beings can achieve ultimate enlightenment, because humans have flaws.

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.