Enlightenment Thinkers Quotes

Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute. ~ Nancy Pearcey

I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health. ~ Voltaire

Testing the theory that we have an innate moral sense as proposed by such Enlightenment thinkers as Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, Bloom provides experimental evidence that "our natural endowments" include "a moral sense - some capacity to distinguish between kind and cruel actions; empathy and compassion - suffering at the pain of those around us and the wish to make this pain go away; a rudimentary sense of fairness - a tendency to favor equal divisions of resources; a rudimentary sense of justice - a desire to see good actions rewarded and bad actions punished. ~ Michael Shermer

Common sense is not so common. ~ Voltaire

We who don't want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Prior to Flew, major apologies for atheism were those of Enlightenment thinkers (David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche).

Major philosophers of Flew's generation who were atheists: W. V. O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle. But none took the step of developing book-length arguments to support their personal beliefs.

In later years, atheist philosophers who critically examined and rejected the traditional arguments for God's existence: Paul Edwards, Wallace Matson, Kai Nielsen, Paul Kurtz, J. L. Mackie, Richard Gale, Michael Martin. But their works did not change the agenda and framework of discussion the way Flew's innovative publications did. ~ Antony Flew

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears. ~ John Locke

When light engages the heart, it causes an illumination of the path, a purification of the consciousness, an enlightenment of the intellect and an establishment of the foundations of dhikr and shukr and of beautiful worship ... ~ Habib Umar Bin Hafiz

To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that's on their minds, even before it's on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a Walkman so what's going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn't much like being talked at; he can't conceal how easily he gets bored. ~ James Richardson

Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken. ~ T. Scott McLeod

Many religions over the years have suggested that when a woman is menstruating, she should be avoided and not touched. ~ Frederick Lenz

Since the Enlightenment, the political order is an order of freedom. The political structures are no longer given, previous to man's freedom, but are rather realities based on freedom, taken on and modified by man ... This new definition of politics carefully distinguishes between state and society. The distinction ... allows us to differentiate between the public sphere of the state of the Church (or the combination of them) as powers from the public sphere 'in which the interests of all men as a social group are expressed. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez

There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled. ~ Saurabh Sharma

To think is to have doubt ... yet even thinking will bring you to "no thought" ... eventually. ~ Vivian Amis

Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson. ~ Charles A. Beard

Dahnhak is not a way to gain enlightenment, but a way to actualize enlightenment. Dahnhak is a way to train yourself so that you can actualize the choices you have already made based on your enlightenment. ~ Ilchi Lee

I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential. ~ James D. Watson

I am filled with uncertainty and fear when thinking about how my two daughters will grow into this world as Hoosiers, as Americans, as women and free thinkers. ~ Nate Powell

The only way to live in this life, is to love this life. ~ Bert McCoy

Enlightenment is nothing more than the complete absence of resistance to what is. End of story. ~ Adyashanti

I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life. ~ Jeff Koons

For the early scholars of Islam, there would have been no conflict between religion and science. The early thinkers were quite clear abou their mission: the Qur'an required them to study alsamawat wal'arth (the skies and the earth) to find proof of their faith. The prophet himself had besought this discipline to seek knowledge 'from the cradle to the grave', no matter how far that search took them, for 'he who travels in search of knowledge, travels along Allah's path to paradise ~ Jim Al-Khalili

A burrito is a delicious food item that breaks down all social barriers and leads to temporary spiritual enlightenment. ~ Lisi Harrison

Knowledge of thyself is the greatest enlightenment. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Not through the dogmas of archaic doctrines will you gain your greatest understandings, but, rather, through the continued evolution of science, and through your keen observations of the natural environment beyond your windows. To comprehend yourself truly, which is also to comprehend the world truly, you needn't look any farther than at what abounds with life around you - the blossoming meadow, the untrodden woodlands. Without this as mankind's overriding objective, I don't foresee an age of actual enlightenment ever arriving. ~ Mitch Cullin

But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind. ~ Immanuel Kant

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists cho ~ G.K. Chesterton

You might have a warrior spirit in there somewhere, and it's just waiting for the opportunity to come out. If you do, you might be a candidate for the pathway to enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken. ~ T. Scott McLeod

Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

They just teach by their presence. They don't really have a message for humanity. It's irrelevant at that point. They're just a fluid, perfect embodiment of what we call the dharmakaya or the enlightenment of nirvana . ~ Frederick Lenz

What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E'.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don't come and go as they please, leaving 'this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate'. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are 'intentional'.

And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike's discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones.

Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience - sudden depression, fatigue, even the 'panic fear' that swept William James to the edge of insanity - is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression - or neurosis - need ~ Colin Wilson

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom. ~ Sherwin Wine

Well, then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European Enlightenment is more important than people. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All great artists and thinkers are great workers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You're only as good as you're next thought of yourself. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

All beings exist ultimately in a condition of inner enlightenment. Enlightenment is in all things. ~ Frederick Lenz

Never once, did Christ ever utter, "I came here to start a religion"

Early Christians did not worship items, relics, wars, or governments. ~ Justin Kyle McFarlane Beau

Time is a slave,
existence is a servant,
reality is a master,
and eternity is queen.

Fate is a slave,
light is a servant,
nature is a master,
and immortality is king.

Mankind is a slave,
knowledge is a servant,
wisdom is a master,
and enlightenment is queen.

The past is a slave,
the present is a servant,
the future is a master,
and God is king, ~ Matshona Dhliwayo