I love the way Monteverdi's opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne cast is fabulous.
I don't believe that human beings can achieve ultimate enlightenment, because humans have flaws.
Our freedoms were born in the ideals of the Enlightenment and the musket fires of an historic revolution.
Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.
The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.
Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment.
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.
If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.
History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.
For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.
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.
Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature.
We're in an age of enlightenment, and we have a choice as a society which path to take.
While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
Gene Roddenbury felt that television was being wasted. That it had the potential for enlightenment and even inspiration.
Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.
Mom takes all the credit for my success. Now Mom says, 'I read your face when you were a baby, and it said you were going to be a star. That's why I named you Ming - because it's all about the sun and the stars and enlightenment.'
Bodhisattva is enlightened in the Buddhist philosophy, religion, tradition. He's enlightened. It's fine - I don't really fight it - but many people use the term 'zen' and terms like 'nirvana,' 'enlightenment' in an almost superficial way. It's not that complicated.
The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.
Three hundred years ago, during the Age of Enlightenment, the coffee house became the center of innovation.
The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.
But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.
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.
The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance.
I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed. That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices.
In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.
With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.
Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.
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.
The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.
In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
