Enlightenment Values Quotes

In American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

Simon Bolivar belongs to the band of modern men whose equals are to be found only when we reach back to republican times of Greece and Rome... In the midst of people who had no more tradition than the respect for an authority sanctioned by the acquiescence of three centuries of ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism, nor any political dogma but submission to an order of things supported by might and force, Bolivar succeeded in defying that power

Brazil is a country largely resistant to ideology. This is a strange fact given its founding by followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who inscribed an epigram from his philosophy of positivism in the national flag: Order and Progress.

There was once in this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a Democrat—a man whose principles and policies are not very prevalent among Democrats today.

If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

I'm very much an Enlightenment kind of guy.

The first requisite for the people's happiness is the abolition of religion.

It's wrong to look at what we call 'Enlightenment values' as some fad of the 18th century. It's deeply rooted in ancient history.

Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam.

The Bourbon King was first ambassador of reason and human happiness.

I am a humble adherent of...Enlightenment Rationalist Fundamentalism.

The forefathers of the United States were children of religious bigotry and persecution, and, as a result, fled Britain to create a new approach to life and government. They valued intellect and education. In fact, they outlined the principles of the United States' democracy to establish intellectual freedom from the Church.

The Italian Revolution was fought first of all to obtain the liberty and unity of the nation, and then, with that achieved, to join the freest and most advanced nations in inaugurating a new era of peace, justice, and joint cooperation in the work of civilization.

Hackerspaces are the digital-age equivalent of English Enlightenment coffee houses. They are places open to all, indifferent to social status, and where ideas and knowledge hold primary value.

Western secularism and representative democracy were hard won, over centuries, and reside at the core of Euro-American identity. They are amendable to discussion but not compromise.

The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.

You've got to protect the system of secular faith in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and Enlightenment values. That way, you can protect all religions.

The scientific picture of the world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but massively wrong. Indeed entire fields of inquiry, especially in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design.

The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.

The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less.

I'd like the United States to become what it was always meant to be, which is a secular nation - more publicly committed to reason, to improving understanding, and promoting education.