The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.

Knowing others is wisdom knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

Modernity the child of the Enlightenment failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.

In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.

The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science especially in the schools of America.

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and honestly I may as well just start it again now because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history and Europe has helped write ours.

History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth more industry more happiness more human enlightenment than from any other way.

Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky the great ocean and the highest peak empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

Working with plants trees fences and walls if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment but of boredom.

To enjoy good health to bring true happiness to one's family to bring peace to all one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

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

By any reasonable measure of achievement the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom to enlightenment.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

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

Borrowing knowledge of reality from all sources taking the best from every study Science of Mind brings together the highest enlightenment of the ages.

Before anything else we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth justice freedom and reason.