Intellectual Enlightenment Quotes

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.

When I contemplate the immense advances in sciences and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.

Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs.

I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.

Only a development of thought achieved through the self-education of the whole man can prevent any body of thought whatsoever from becoming a poison; can prevent enlightenment from becoming an agent of death.

On each race is laid the duty to keep alight its own lamp of mind as its part in the illumination of the world. To break the lamp of any people into deprive it of its rightful place in the world festival.

Almost all the calamities of man, except the physical evils which are inherent in his nature, are in a great measure to be imputed to erroneous views of religion, or bad systems of government; and these cannot be coexistent for any considerable time with an extensive diffusion of knowledge

Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.

Without knowledge there can be no sure progress. Vice and barbarism are the inseparable companions of ignorance. Nor is it too much to say that, except in rare instances, the highest virtue is attained only through intelligence.

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science.

Because there is no greater evil than ignorance and the destruction of genius. Ignorance has been responsible for more death, more bigotry, and more sin than any other force. It is the destroyer of mankind.

It is the mind that makes one wise or ignorant, bound or emancipated.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force.

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.

If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

How can there be any progress of the country without the spread of education, the dawning of knowledge?

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.

Training and education is one and the same: that is, to train the mind through a discipline in order to awake the inner intelligence of the individuals.

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.

If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavour comes to bloom - to be witness to those rare moments when the dawn of understanding finally descends upon what appeared to be confusion only a while ago - to listen to the sound of darkness crumbling.