Enlightenment quotes
628 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside enlightenment — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The central ideas of Christianity, an angry God and vicarious atonement, are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions."
"Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment."
"When you get a new worldview you get a new world. It's like the shift from medieval Christianity to the Renaissance and enlightenment."
"By nature, it's impossible to describe enlightenment! How do you plan on sharing your enlightenment? Hahaha, that's impossible. Wake up! That'll be the end of the world if you ever succeed!"
"Suffering is temporary, enlightenment is forever."
"After enlightenment, the laundry."
"Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom...is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. -Anthony Bourdain"
"The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines."
"You must continue to go back to the beginning, to the foundation, and question the foundation. Even once you‘ve reached Samadhi you must go back so you can create it at will. Samadhi is the beginning of spiritual growth, not the end. You must always be questioning. Enlightenment comes as an accident at first, then you have to learn to recreate it."
"Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular."
"The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity."
"The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation."
"Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change."
"Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security."
"Logic is the key to an all-inclusive spiritual well-being."
"To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence."
"Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in a state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is."
"Enlightenment is not the process of learning 'new' information. It is the process of 'reminding' ourselves that the answers are already 'within our consciousness'. All knowledge, all energy, all information is within us, not outside of us. it always has been and always will be."
"Enlightenment does not ask you to be perfect; it simply asks you to find perfection right where you stand."
"Enlightenment is your ego's greatest disappointment."
