Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Enlightenment Quotes

This could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment. But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home.

– General John Allen

On Donald Trump’s response to people’s protests on racism.

I’m very much an Enlightenment kind of guy.

– Jimmy Wales

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.

– Johann Most

I don’t read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I’m also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

– Joyce Carol Oates

We must recognize our own behavioral errors. To be blunt, you are not likely to become a cognitive Zen master anytime soon. But a little enlightenment could keep you from making some common investing errors.

– Barry Ritholtz

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.

– Chuck Palahniuk

Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn’t just by conquest. It’s through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants.

– Amy Chua

And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment.

– Bodhidharma

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

– Bodhidharma

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

– M. H. Abrams

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.

– Noam Chomsky

Gene Roddenbury felt that television was being wasted. That it had the potential for enlightenment and even inspiration.

– George Takei

For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.

– Michael Dirda

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

– David Hockney

One of the Age of Enlightenment’s most hypnotic images is Ledoux’s rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 – 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.

– Martin Filler

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

– Michael Polanyi

Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature.

– Nathaniel Philbrick

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

– Elon Musk

Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

– Noam Chomsky

It’s wrong to look at what we call ‘Enlightenment values’ as some fad of the 18th century. It’s deeply rooted in ancient history.

– Matthew Stewart

Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

– Pankaj Mishra

My music is not just about entertainment. It is about enlightenment also.

– Kailash Kher

Movies can be instruments of enlightenment.

– Marianne Williamson

Enlightenment is the key to everything, and it is the key to intimacy, because it is the goal of true authenticity.

– Marianne Williamson

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

– Lao Tzu

Our sexual lives are maintained by the shadow side and the light side, so the more we can understand and embrace enlightenment, the less need there is for chemical enhancement.

– Kyan Douglas

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

– Kurt Vonnegut

Our freedoms were born in the ideals of the Enlightenment and the musket fires of an historic revolution.

– John Boehner

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.

– Morihei Ueshiba

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

– Paddy Chayefsky

- 1
- 2