#enlighten

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#ghosts #houses #more #ooze #our

The only people available to change the world are the people now living in it, with all the beliefs they bring along - however retrograde those beliefs may appear to those of us who see ourselves as enlightened. ↗

— Todd Gitlin

#appear #available #beliefs #bring #change

It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years. ↗

— Alexander Haig

#done #enlightened #executed #followed #had

But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood? ↗

— Francis Wright

#been #civilized #civilized nations #engaged #enlightened

[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom. ↗

— Malcolm Muggeridge

#enlightenment #humanity #pascal #beauty

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#century #enlightenment #major #philosophers #secular

The dynamic, future-oriented, ecstatically inspired state of the evolutionary impulse is the new enlightenment that I am speaking about. The inner eye has become compelled by the ever-unfulfilled promise of creating the future at a higher level than what exists in the present moment. When the awakening to this powerful spiritual urgency becomes one’s irrevocable attainment and permanent state, one has surely landed on the yonder shore, where the evolutionary impulse has become the driving force of fundamental principle guiding the vehicle called the body, mind, and soul. . . . God is only as powerful in this world as those of us who have the courage and audacity to awaken in this way—to become one with our own impulse to evolve. That’s the awesome significance of being a human being who is awake. When you realize this for yourself, you discover what an extraordinary blessing it is to be who you are, in this world, right now. In fact, the whole point of the creative process is to be here—to participate fully, radically, consciously in the Universe Project. In this evolutionary context, the point of enlightenment is not merely to transcend the world so that you can be free of it but to embrace the world completely, to embrace the entire process as your self, knowing that you are the creative principle incarnate, and you have a lot of work to do. As an individual, you are instantaneously liberated, simply through taking that step, but your personal liberation is a mere by-product of finally embracing the awe-inspiring burden of the Universe Project, which in truth has been yours all along. ↗

— Andrew Cohen

#evolutionary-enlightenment #evolutionary-impulse #courage

...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions. ↗

— Eckhart Tolle

#past-and-future #spiritual

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. ↗

— Buddha

#bring #come #control #discipline #enjoy

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. ↗

— Adam Ferguson

#ages #any #blindness #design #enlightened