Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Enlightenment.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark...To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, there is the aim.
Victor Hugo
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone --or Something --and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
Dag Hammarskjold
We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.
Christopher Hitchens
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
Nikos Kazantzakis
If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is.
Wayne Dyer
Enlightenment must come little by little-otherwise it would overwhelm.
Idries Shah
A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
Simone Weil
In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.
No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.
Andre Breton
I do not comprehend those rules of conduct that make us so content with self and so cold to those we love. I detest prudence, I even hate (suffer me to say so) those duties of friendship which substitute propriety for interest, and circumspection for feeling. How shall I say it? I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.
Julie de Lespinasse, Letter to t
This notion is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
Enlightenment is a sublime word, if one goes back to its meaning; it means illumination of the spirit through truth, liberation from the shadows of error, or uncertainty, of doubt. Enlightenment is, in its deepest meaning, the transfiguration (Verkl
Paul Leopold Haffner
