The Enlightenment was a period of profound intellectual and philosophical growth that shaped the modern world. Its thinkers explored ideas about reason, freedom, and human potential, leaving behind timeless wisdom that continues to inspire us today. In this collection, we’ve gathered 58 of the most powerful quotes from the Enlightenment era, offering insight and inspiration for anyone seeking clarity and understanding in an ever-changing world. Whether you’re new to these ideas or revisiting them, these quotes provide a meaningful glimpse into the minds that helped define an era.
1. “What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.” - George Eliot (Middlemarch)
2. “Dream Song:As my eyes Search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring. Whenever I pause The noise Of the village. ” - Frances Densmore
3. “According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. (quoted by Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly)” - Deepak Chopra
4. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” - Socrates
5. “I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself.” - Philip K. Dick
6. “It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.” - Francis Crick
7. “Is it by chance that the 18th century of France, the century of the "philosophy of enlightenment," did not produce any poets except the Marquis de Sade, who -- despite his participation in the events of this epoch -- expressed the first violent protest against the essential postulates of this period?” - Benjamin Péret
8. “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.” - Albert Einstein
9. “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” - Vera Nazarian
10. “Om is not just a sound or vibration. It is not just a symbol. It is the entire cosmos, whatever we can see, touch, hear and feel. Moreover, it is all that is within our perception and all that is beyond our perception. It is the core of our very existence. If you think of Om only as a sound, a technique or a symbol of the Divine, you will miss it altogether. Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.” - Amit Ray
11. “The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.” - Anne Lamott
12. “The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.” - Joseph Smith Jr.
13. “It is neither cowardice nor betrayal to insist that the Enlightenment's main lesson is to be mindful of how much it has left its inheritors to figure out.” - Samuel Moyn
14. “As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.” - Christopher Hitchens
15. “It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.” - Henry David Thoreau
16. “Memories are of the ethereal, and not the material world, that is how I know I am forever.” - Michael Poeltl
17. “Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. Beginning of a non-ending process in all dimensions of richness. ” - Osho
18. “Even if you have not awakened, if you realize that your perceptions and activities are all like dreams and you view them with detachment, not giving rise to grasping and rejecting discrimination, then this is virtually tantamount to awakening from the dream.” - Muso Kokushi
19. “The Encyclopedia--the advance artillery of reason, the armada of philosophy, the siege engine of the enlightenment...” - Peter Prange
20. “Just remember this, my girl, when you look up in the sky you can see the stars and still not see the light.” - Jack Tempchin
21. “Bringing to light what had been hidden in darkness should not overwhelm you, but EDUCATE you.” - Solange nicole
22. “As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.” - CHOGYAM TRUNGPA
23. “Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.” - Tahir Shah
24. “We think a wise person is someone who solves problems. Truth is, a wise person is someone who avoids problems.” - Prem Rawat
25. “It is certain that such a revolution in thought - that is, such an expansion of consciousness, such an evolution of intelligence - is not the result of a whim. It is in fact a question of a cosmic influence to which the earth, along with everything in it, is subjected. A phase in the gestation of the planetary particle of our solar system is completed. Gaston Bachelard observes, in this connection, what he calls “a mutation of Spirit.” A new period must begin, and this is heralded by seismic movement, climate changes, and finally, above all, by the spirit that animates man.” - Schwaller de Lubicz
26. “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” - KANT, IMMANUEL
27. “Life sucks. Enlightenment is getting over it.” - Ari Clayera
28. “Teach those only willing to listen and listen to those only willing to teach” - Justin Southwick
29. “Enlightenment is at the source of everything. From it, flows our Intuition and our creative energy. It is the delta of the human spirit ~ what we innately seek to return to, as we find ourselves lost in this world.” - Kim Chestney
30. “I'm no one... I don't want to be anyone. I stepped into singularity to exist within a void. I'm no one... However, I am becoming... Imagination. I am grabbing conception, and leaving humanity behind. Humans have lost their sight, and individuality makes people blind to the truth. It makes people believe that anything is possible. Only nothing is possible. But then again, my words are the words of no one.” - Lionel Suggs
31. “The Enlightenment may have made its most lasting impact in the way we live and think today through its social history. Our institutions and laws, our conception of the state, and our political sensitivity all stem from Enlightenment ideas… Remarkably enough, at the center of these ideas stands the age-old concept of natural law. Much if the Enlightenment’s innovation in in political theory may be traced to a change in the interpretation of that concept.” - Louis Dupré
32. “Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over.” - Tom Cowan
33. “By reflecting a little on this subject I am almost convinced that those numberless small Circuses we see on the moon are the works of the Lunarians and may be called their Towns.” - William Herschel
34. “Maybe it’s something which can’t be defined,” Enso Roshi says. “Maybe it’s a question, to be lived.” - T. Scott McLeod
35. “I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other.” - T. Scott McLeod
36. “It is the rub that polishes the jewel,” Enso Roshi says. “Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons.” - T. Scott McLeod
37. “If you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war.” - T. Scott McLeod
38. “Enlightenment is its own reward, its own punishment. You begin to see so much more. And so much more sees you.” - Laird Barron
39. “We are all blessed ones. Heaven is no longer in the clouds. It is right here, all around us, everywhere; we must only open our eyes to see it.” - Kim Chestney
40. “Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.” - Barry Lopez
41. “When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”. I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.” - Swami Dhyan Giten
42. “Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness tohappen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.” - Swami Dhyan Giten
43. “That which you see in me is that which is in you. ~ Maitreya Miranda* ~” - Miranda* Linda Weisz
44. “People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.” - Idries Shah
45. “An enlightened person raises the level of the consciousness of the entire community.” - Phyllis Theroux
46. “The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the bodhichitta teachings, the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in the unconditional openness of the prajna, patiently cutting through all our tendencies to hang on.” - Pema Chodron
47. “Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.” - James K.A. Smith
48. “The road to spiritual enlightenment is an individual experience. The spiritual leader, guru, master or teacher is only a portion of that journey. Eventually, one must “leave the nest” so that they are not limited by the master/student relationship. True advancement begins when the student gains confidence as a practitioner of self-awareness. This can only be done without the constraints of another’s journey, such as the master or teacher.” - Gary Hopkins
49. “You will always have time for what you make time for” - Gary Hopkins
50. “Things do not happen to us… They happen because of us” - Gary Hopkins
51. “Taking part in your own creation is as simple as changing your mind. The way you think literally creates your everyday reality. Obsessive and negative thinking fosters a negative or even hostile lifestyle. Positive and constructive thoughts create happiness and contentment in the same manor. The fortunate thing for us is that the frequency wave of a positive thought far exceeds that of a negative one, so even if we suffer through a bout of depression or anger, a few positive thoughts can easily reverse the damage we have created in ourselves” - Gary Hopkins
52. “We are all Masters. Every thought, word, and action creates our individual reality from one moment to the next. Each individual’s creation, combines to form a shared reality that we all experience…. Consciousness. Being Masters requires us to take responsibility and great care in all that we do, so that the greater, combined consciousness is not hindered by our individual limitations. As Masters, we all have the ability to create, and live in Nirvana. Actively engaging in this personal responsibility, gives each of us the power to live harmoniously as well as to contribute positive re-enforcement to the greater Consciousness that we all share” - Gary Hopkins
53. “Allowing attachments to people/things create a compulsive addiction in us to be controlling. This “control” (fueled by fear of loss) fools us into a false sense of security and love. At first glance, it is common to confuse the idea of Conscious Detachment with non-feeling or being cold, however learning this skill is a giant leap towards enlightenment. When you consciously detach from an object or a loved one, you empower them to exist at their potential. From this perspective, just being in their presence fosters feelings of love and admiration that far exceed any relationship that is limited with expectations, confinement and control” - Gary Hopkins
54. “Loneliness is a condition of energetic imbalance. As with all human conditions it is an illusion, albeit a very debilitating one if left unchecked. The key to overcoming any imbalance is to open your awareness to it, and then simply observe it. By observing the imbalance, the anguish of the emotional aspect dissipates allowing a new perspective to emerge, which ultimately has a smoothing effect on the imbalance itself. A focused mind over a short period of time can conquer any energetic imbalance… even loneliness” - Gary Hopkins
55. “When a bully is held accountable for his actions, his future actions will change. Bad behavior only continues for those who allow it.” - Gary Hopkins
56. “Questions are only offensive to those who have something to hide” - Gary Hopkins
57. “In so many ways we are still in the dark ages, but there is light appearing over the horizon of choice and consciousness.” - Bryant McGill
58. “Saints and bodhisattvas may achieve what Christians call mystical union or Buddhists call satori--a perpetual awareness of the force at the heart of the heart of things. For these enlightened few, the world is always lit. For the rest of us, such clarity comes only fitfully, in sudden glimpses or slow revelations. Quakers refer to these insights as openings. When I first heard the term from a Friend who was counseling me about my resistance to the Vietnam War, I though of how on an overcast day, sunlight pours through a break in the clouds. After the clouds drift on, eclipsing the sun, the sun keeps shining behind the veil, and the memory of its light shines on in the mind.” - Scott Russell Sanders
