Enlightenment

The Enlightenment (17th–18th century) championed reason, science, and individual rights as the basis for society. Thinkers like Locke, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant reshaped politics, religion, and philosophy.

32 thinkers1,412 quotesTop field: Philosophy

"The life of man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

JL

John Locke· b. 1943View quote →

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"Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?"

🇺🇸John Locke

"The life of man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

🇧🇷Isaac Newton

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Narcissus, or The Self-Admirer: A Comedy"

🇫🇷Voltaire

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

🇺🇸Adam Smith

"When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers."

🇺🇸Theodor Adorno

"The jargon of authenticity … is a trademark of societalized chosenness, … sub-language as superior language."

"The word of God is the creation we behold and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man."

Jonathan Edwards (theologian)

🇺🇸Jonathan Edwards (theologian)

"Resolved, to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better."

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

"It was then clearly not the intention or the object of Jesus to suffer and to die, but to build up a worldly kingdom, and to deliver the Israelites from bondage."

Christoph Martin Wieland

🇩🇪Christoph Martin Wieland

🇩🇪Hans Fritzsche

"I often said that never in the history of the world did one man receive so much faith and trust as Hitler. Similary, no one has ever betrayed so many people and abused so much good faith as he did."

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

🇫🇷Julien Offray de La Mettrie

"hy should we divide the sensitive principle which thinks in man? ...For a thing that is divided can no longer without absurdity be regarded as indivisible."

Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great

"From the age of ten, Peter III was partial to drink."

"Since Religion is calculated for reasonable Creatures, 'tis Conviction and not Authority that should bear Weight with them."

🇺🇸Susan Neiman

"I’m delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in."

Narayana Guru

🇮🇳Narayana Guru

"The legacy of Narayan Guru is a society elevated, in accord, the lower classes educated and full of dignity and a feeling of self-worth."

Francesco Mario Pagano

Francesco Mario Pagano

🇬🇧Erasmus Darwin

"a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian."

🇨🇳Fang Lizhi

"If every one of those good words — liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, human rights — has been called "bourgeois", what on earth does that leave for us?"

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."

Moses Mendelssohn

🇩🇪Moses Mendelssohn

🇺🇸Curtis Yarvin

"Unqualified Reservations e-books—collected writings"

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher

"Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle."

"Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs."

🇨🇦Eckhart Tolle

"When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. p. 17"

Julie de Lespinasse

🇫🇷Julie de Lespinasse

"You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul."

"Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples."

Frederick the Great

🇱🇹Frederick the Great

"A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order."

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)

🇮🇪Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)

"Whoever voluntarily undertakes the necessary office of rearing and educating, obtains the parental power without generation."

🇬🇧Dugald Stewart

"Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of extensive and various reading without reflection."

Fukuzawa Yukichi

🇯🇵Fukuzawa Yukichi

"Fukuzawa's portrait marketed as Chinese Tea of Dr. Ming"

Notable Quotes

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

— Isaac Newton, b. 1934View →

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

— Voltaire, b. 1694View →

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

— John Locke, b. 1943View →

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."

— Voltaire, b. 1694View →

"What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean."

— Isaac Newton, b. 1934View →

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