Enlightened Society Quotes

• The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.

  Samuel Smiles

  Country, Women, Character

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.59

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• Enlightened Society is all about nurturing the human spirit - waking up to the goodness, kindness and strength that we already have.

  Sakyong Mipham

  Kindness, Wake Up, Waking

  Sakyong Mipham (2013). “The Shambhala Principle: Discovering Humanity's Hidden Treasure”, p.34, Harmony

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• The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Wisdom

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  I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Change, Peace, Boys

  Thomas Jefferson (1997). “Thomas Jefferson, His Words and Vision”, p.18, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.

  Dee Hock

  Nature, Struggle, Years

  "The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock". Interview with M. Mitchell Waldrop, www.fastcompany.com. October 31, 1996.

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• The intuitive mind is a sacred gift.

  Albert Einstein

  Psychics, Gifts Of The Spirit, Faithful Servants

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• I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Peace, Exercise

  Letter to William Charles Jarvis, 28 Sept. 1820

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• Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Philosophical, Vocabulary, People

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• An enlightened society is one where all people - the rich and the poor, the literate and the illiterate, the black and the white, men and women - live happily as children of the same Lord. Thus experiencing the brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God.

  Pandurang Shastri Athavale

  Children, Men, White Man

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• Shambhala vision is universal. It has no bias towards one type of culture or group. It is not ethnocentric and does not encourage one specific kind of person, race, or religion. Shambhala vision promotes a universality in relationship to basic goodness. All human beings are basically good and an enlightened society, at various levels of manifestation, can occur in any culture.

  Sakyong Mipham

  Race, Vision, Groups

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• Western societies from ancient Athens to imperial Rome to the French republic rarely collapsed because of a shortage of resources or because foreign enemies proved too numerous or formidable in arms - even when those enemies were grim Macedonians or Germans. Rather, in times of peace and prosperity there arose an unreal view of the world beyond their borders, one that was the product of insularity brought about by success, and an intellectual arrogance that for some can be the unfortunate byproduct of an enlightened society.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Views, Rome, Intellectual Arrogance

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• The great tragedy is that they're removing art completely, not because they're putting more science in, but because they can't afford the art teachers or because somebody thinks it's not useful. An enlightened society has all of this going on within it. It's part of what distinguishes what it is to be human from other life forms on Earth - that we have culture.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Teacher, Art, Bad Ass

  "Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger". Converge Magazine, May 21, 2009.

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• Regardless of the importance of known evidence to the contrary, the arts are generally regarded as being so much entertaining fluff, a commodity that isn't a priority in the traditional program of learning. This is unacceptable in a so-called 'enlightened' society.

  Ken Danby

  Art, Priorities, Commodity

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