Secular Enlightenment Quotes

Strength in peace. Strength in love. Always. ~ Janice Anderson

The witch-burnings did not take place during the "Dark Ages," as we commonly suppose. They occurred between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries– precisely during and following the Renaissance, that glorious period when, as we are taught, "men's" minds were being freed from bleakness and superstition. While Michelangelo was sculpting and Shakespeare writing, the witches were burning. The whole secular "Enlightenment," in fact, the male professions of doctor, lawyer, judge, artist, all rose from the ashes of the destroyed women's culture. Renaissance men were celebrating naked female beauty in their art, while women's bodies were being tortured and burned by the hundreds of thousands all around them. ~ Monica Sjoo Barbara Mor

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

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival. ~ Michael Shermer

There are different pathways that lead to enlightenment. We could say that everyone's life is one of the pathways. Your life is a pathway that leads to enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz

If one comes to fundamentals then this is the most fundamental thing: the moment you are not, enlightenment is. With emptiness, the matter is settled. ~ Osho

Whenever I talk with fellow Christians about the necessity of an intellectually responsible faith, I often receive a response that is a mixture of agreement and anxiety. Most Christians would agree that our belief system should not look like the secular caricature–a blind leap past the cliff edge of rationality. However, in some important respects, many believers are at a loss for how to improve upon loving God with their minds. The vast number of books, journals, articles, video lectures, online courses, and formal degree programs overwhelms them, and sadly, many never begin at all, choosing instead to continue through life with an intellectually shallow, emotions-driven faith. Others do just enough studying to make them dangerous.

In this post, I'd like to offer a short set of guidelines for Christians who wish to be obedient to the command to worship God with their minds while avoiding the common pitfalls that, quite frankly, produce more stumbling blocks for unbelievers than they remove. ~ Melissa Cain Travis

The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

It is about getting a sense of integrity about issues. That was was my enlightenment over it and knowing that I had a safe place to go to handle anything in life. ~ John Travolta

The closing of our earthly eyes is such a simple event. The shedding of the physical body does not solve the fundamental problems of enlightenment, just as changing ones clothes has nothing to do with the deep questions of life and destiny. ~ Andre Luiz Moreira

She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to - an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Let today's sunlight light up your bones & remind you of the treasure that is held deep within you. Let you always allow love, joy & peace to surround you & pass through you. Let you show clearly your soul's infinite & sacred wisdom of the ages in your every action, thought & word. Let your vibrancy, livliness, abilities, capabilities, goodness, enlightenment & potency grow manyfold with each passing day allowing your respect, concern, consideration & reverence to grow further for everything around. Let you improve yourself everyday, try becoming your best version & stop allowing small small things to keep you away from the blessings of God. Stay Happy, Healthy & Successful! ~ Rajesh Goyal

We need to find secular ways to cultivate warm-heartedness. We need secular ways to educate ourselves about inner values. The source of a happy life is within us. Trouble makers in many parts of the world are often quite well educated, so it is not just education that we need. We need to pay attention to inner values. ~ Dalai Lama

Education provide enlightenment for one's life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

True teachers of enlightenment are hard to find. The popular ones, of course, usually aren't enlightened because how could they be? They just tell people what they want to hear. ~ Frederick Lenz

back in the middle ages
they burned unruly women at the stake
and out of the ashes of their bones and flesh
rose the Enlightenment and Reason fresh
and the white men declared
there's no such thing as witches
they're just crazy psycho-bitches
but we certainly can't let them run free
lock 'em up and throw away the key
yeah they said: lock 'em up and throw away the key

cause there's nothing scarier than a woman mad and/or
aware of her own magic
tragic how much violence is done
in the name of science
to ensure our silence

in Victorian times they located suffering in our uterus
in the blood in the soft internal organs
took our pain our righteous rage
they called it 'hysteria'
and then Dr. Freud ignored women's horror stories
herstories of abuse and rape and
took a justified hatred of the penis and called it
envy (he sold more books that way) ~ Leah Harris

Piketty would impose a progressive annual tax on capital. By a static analysis, such a tax might reduce the yield of capital to the rate of GDP expansion and thus eliminate the bias toward top-heavy accumulation by elites. Upholding the secular stagnation theory of permanent growth slowdown, he naturally focuses on depressing the return to capital. Taking money from the rich and giving it to government might seem to address "inequality." But by putting capital into the hands of the least productive users of it - politicians - he would aggravate the very stagnation he warns against. ~ George Gilder

Awareness is wakefulness. Wakefulness is consciousness. Consciousness is limitless awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz

Attaining bliss can take lifetimes, or one can simply choose to experience it in their deepest dreams. Sleep well my friend, as dreams are vehicles that can quickly take you to the awareness that you call Nirvana ~ Gary Hopkins

The enlightened are superior to the learned. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Truth is straight.
Ignorance is narrow.
Knowledge is wide.
Wisdom is high.

Contentment is straight.
Lust is narrow.
Peace is wide.
Joy is high.

Humility is straight.
Ego is narrow.
Grace is wide.
Meekness is high.

Faith is straight.
Envy is narrow.
Hope is wide.
Love is high. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Since the Enlightenment, in the great tension between rationalism (how we would like things to be so they make sense to us) and empiricism (how things are), we have been blaming the world for not fitting the beds of "rational" models, have tried to change humans to fit technology, fudged our ethics to fit our needs for employment, asked economic life to fit the theories of economists, and asked human life to squeeze into some narrative. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

When you die, no matter who you are,
you may be remembered for your courage
or despised for your cowardice,
you may be remembered for your gratitude
or despised for your bitterness,
you may be remembered for your benevolence
or despised for your meanness,
you may be remembered for your modesty
or despised for your arrogance,
you may be remembered for your peace
or despised for your violence,
you may be remembered for your compassion
or despised for your ruthlessness,
you may be remembered for your mercy
or despised for your vengeance,
you may be remembered for your love
or despised for your unkindness,
you may be remembered for your strengths
or despised for your weaknesses,
you may be remembered for your virtues
or despised for your unrighteousness,
you may be remembered for your knowledge
or despised for your ignorance,
you may be remembered for your wisdom
or despised for your foolishness,
and you may be remembered for your accomplishments
or despised for your incompetence.

When I die, I want to be remembered
for my smile, not my tears;
for my laughter, not my pain;
for my joy, not my grief;
for my patience, not my anger;
for my friends, not my enemies;
for my mind, not my riches;
for my heart, not my titles;
for my soul, not my achievements;
for my triumphs, not my tragedies; ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern! ~ Mahatma Gandhi

These are the mysterious ways of knowledge, power and enlightenment. I can only allude to them in words. I cannot possibly explain what this process is like. ~ Frederick Lenz

Relationships without a Divine Aim always "break up," for they are based on nothing. Divine Purpose could be described as forgiveness -- the undoing and releasing of the ego. Belief in the ego prevents awareness of True Union and Intimacy. The underlying fear of Intimacy and Union is the ego's fear of loss of itself, the 'personal self' and the 'personal world. ~ David Hoffmeister

The more completely the machinery of thought subjugates existence, the more blindly it is satisfied with reproducing it. Enlightenment thereby regresses to the mythology it has never been able to escape. For mythology had reflected in its forms the essence of the existing order - cyclical motion, fate, domination of the world as truth - and had renounced hope. ~ Theodor W. Adorno

There is no strictly secular language that can translate religious awe. ~ Marilynne Robinson

When will people reach a state of enlightenment where they realize it's so much better to dislike people for individual reasons, rather than their arbitrary grouping, a cultural background, or the color of their skin? ~ Dennis Liggio

Academics and scientists too easily enjoy the role of secular priesthood given them in the nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley in particular. ~ Simon James

The rote nature of education in contemporary Muslim societies can be traced to attitudes inherited from traditional education, wherein knowledge is something to be acquired rather than discovered. and in which the attitude of mind is passive and receptive rather than creative and inquisitive. The social conditioning of an authoritarian traditional environment has. as an inescapable consequence. That all knowledge comes to be viewed as unchangeable and all books tend to be memorized or venerated to some degree. The concept of secular knowledge as a problem-solving tool which evolves over time is alien to traditional thought. ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy

For the serious and dedicated guitarist, learning to play and master the Guitar represents The Path or Way of Enlightenment of which there is no end. Ultimately, playing the Guitar represents the Path to Spiritual Perfection. The guitarist is always a student on this Path. To become a master of the Guitar, relatively speaking, is to always be a student of the Guitar, continually learning and growing with the instrument. The master never thinks of him or herself as a master, but rather as the eternal student on whatever Path he or she is walking in life. We are all students here on this little green earth. ~ David Cherubim

The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation. ~ Alan Cohen

Every day is a new opportunity to work with what you have inside toward enlightenment. ~ Pema Chodron

As a teenager, rather than setting myself on a course to pursue fame (quite common growing up in L.A., the entertainment capital of the world), happiness, fulfillment, and spiritual enlightenment (also quite common), I skipped right on to trying to be successful. 'Let's just get on with it,' I felt. 'Onward' became my motto. ~ Karen Finerman

No matter how strange things get, know that with every breath, you are becoming that which you have always been. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

I have not in this lifetime yet met one person who earnestly seeks enlightenment in the West. Not one person. ~ Frederick Lenz

To me, enlightenment is a big shift inside your eyes, a different way to use your mind so you can understand some of God, some of Jesus. But it is maybe not one shift, but many small shifts. You change your spiritual condition - by prayer, by meditation, by the way you live, the way you decide to think, by the lessons you learn in living this life with a good intention - and then, when this happens, after a long times or a short times, the way you see the world changes. ~ Roland Merullo

My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public. ~ Ian Hamilton Finlay

When 'Christians' cite the Bible as the basis for secular policies, they must explain why they believe Muslims in the Middle East are evil for doing the same with the Koran. ~ Kurt Eichenwald

When I meditate, people see manifestations of light when I go into samadhi and through the samadhis. Sometimes the energy of enlightenment is so clear that people don't realize that their attention has been elevated. ~ Frederick Lenz

We are one multidimensional being and exist in multiple universes transcending space and time. We could also be described as multiple personalities of the Universe/God. This is important because enlightenment involves comprehending the complexity of our Oneness and realizing our multidimensional existence. We are everything, everywhere at every time. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

We need to learn that truth consists not in correct doctrine, but in correct doctrine plus the inward enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

I Dream I am from a clash of Color, From an idea of love, modeled for others' perception. I see me as I am, but am hidden from others' views. I am who I am, but a living contradiction to my peers. I see life as a blessing, a gift granted to me. Why should my tint describe me? Why should my culture degrade me? Why should the ignorance of another conjure my presence? Too many times I've been disappointed by the looks, By the sneers and misconceptions of the people who don't get me, Who don't understand why it hurts. I dream of a place of glory and freedom, Of losing the weight of oppression on my back. I dream of the enlightenment of people, Of the opening of their eyes. I dream for acceptance, And for the blessing of feeling special just once. One moment of glory . . . for the true virtue in my life. For the glimmer of freedom, and a rise in real pride. ~ Glenn E. Singleton

Against the mutability of dream, the natural laws advocated by our bewigged Enlightenment forebears are powerless. Newton, for instance, insists on gravity and other prohibitions of the physical world, from which (while we are awake) we are never free. But we can fly in dreams. ~ Gregory Maguire