#enlighten

Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable. ↗

— Anthony de Mello

#inspirational #spirituality #inspirational

The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#between #book #connections #constitution #debates

We are condemned to be modern. We can’t escape the facts of our history or of living in an age dominated by instrumental rationality, even as we look for ways out of it... But it has become our historic responsibility to acknowledge the continuing importance of myth, at a level beyond science, in realizing a more organic, holistic relation to the world. A future social ecology would transcend both anti-Enlightenment reaction and [a] reified Enlightenment counter-reaction, which remain only fragmented polarities within bourgeois modernity. ↗

— David Watson

#modernity #myth #science #social-ecology #age

You can't expect anyone to trust revelation if he hasn't experienced it himself. Those who haven't only know reason. And since revelation is a thing apart, and cannot be accounted for reasonably, they never will believe you. This is the great division of the world and always has been. When reason and revelation run together, why, then you have something great, a great age. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#knowledge #numinous #seek-and-you-shall-find #solace #spiritual

Bhikkus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning? The eye is burning, visible forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning; also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact as its condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of greed, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion, with birth, ageing and death, with sorrow, with lamentation, with pain, grief and despair it is burning. ↗

— The Buddha's Fire Sermon

#enlightenment #fire #fire-sermon #philosophy #religion

And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you. ↗

— John Fowles

#discovery #enlightenment #youth #age

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#books #education #enlightenment #light #literacy

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves. ↗

— Ken Kesey

#existence #world

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#education #enlighten #evidence #ignorance #knowledge

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform. ↗

— Derrick A. Bell

#empathy #enlightenment #justice #reform #education