Home / Topics / Enlightenment Quotes

Enlightenment Quotes

Browse 3092 quotes about Enlightenment.

Enlightenment Quotes

“As Enlightenment philosophers and scholars consciously adopted the methods of science to establish such abstract concepts as rights, liberty, and justice, successive generations have become schooled in thinking of these abstractions as applied to others in matrices-like mental rotations.”

Thinking Justice Liberty Rights Generations Enlightenment Concepts Method Philosopher Abstract Scholar Abstraction Adopted Schooled Liberty And Justice Rotation

Author:Michael Shermer

“Women have been denied access to advanced methods of self discovery throughout the ages.”

Has Beens Self Age Women Enlightenment Discovery Method Access Self Discovery Denied

Author:Frederick Lenz

“I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism”

Years Mother Values Break Modern Humility Enlightenment Method Billions Posts Fragile Autism Elegance Modernity Mother Nature Robust Erudition Triplet Nerdiness

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.”

Form Enemy Influence Enlightenment Romantic Direct Method Passionate Extremes Consistent Crucial Revolt Scientific Method Rationalism Indirect Universalism Direct And Indirect

Book:Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Source: Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

“I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.”

Ifs Believe Would Be Science Spirituality Religious Answers Rich Source Healthy Enlightenment Discovery Method Cosmic Believe In Me Skepticism Scientific Method Mining

Book:The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

“You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method - you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment... the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That`s what enlightenment is!”

Thinking Way Should States Moments Action Effort Achieve Exercise Enlightenment Yoga Method Technique Planning Realization Passivity Receptivity Passivity Is Sudden Realization

Author:Rajneesh

“No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.”

Source: The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry

“We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.”

Men World Mind Humans Made Political Individual Stage Fronts Enlightenment All Things Method Prepared Legacy Consent Scope Ambiguous Scientific Method Human Freedom

Author:James Q. Wilson

“Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.”

Way Meditation Achieve Enlightenment All Things Ultimate Method Oneness Ultimate Truth Actualization

Author:Dogen

“The recurrence during the eighteenth century Enlightenment of the aspiration to be the 'Newton of the moral sciences' testifies to the prestige not just of celestial mechanics, but of the 'experimental method' more generally.”

Moral Century Enlightenment Method Aspiration Mechanic Newton Celestial Prestige Recurrence

Book:The Two Cultures

Source: The Two Cultures

“In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.”

May Littles Lasts Universe Doubt Strange Goes On Enlightenment Method Arrogant Wilder

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.”