Before ANYTHING else, we need a NEW age of ENLIGHTENMENT. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and REASON.

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.

For even the ORDINARY well-read PERSON, the French ENLIGHTENMENT is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, VOLTAIRE.

The PROCESS of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the STABILITY of beliefs HELD explicitly as articles of FAITH.

In a WAY, LIGHT unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. PEOPLE FREQUENTLY talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist ENLIGHTENMENT.

People can HATE on you for doing what it is that MAKES you happy, but ULTIMATELY, it has to belong to you. It shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks. LIFE is not easy. The road to happiness is not a path well trotted. You have to find your own path to ENLIGHTENMENT.

I believe that ART has been a VEHICLE for me that's been about ENLIGHTENMENT and expanding my own parameters, to GIVE me courage to EXERCISE the freedom that I have in life.

I'm very MUCH an ENLIGHTENMENT KIND of GUY.

The theater is the PLACE where PEOPLE create ideas and SEND messages out, and you LEARN, and I think it's a fair venue for DISAGREEMENT and enlightenment.

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.

To me, the most important thing is to tell a GOOD STORY. If I can do that, I think that enlightenment, respect of NATURE, etc. FOLLOWS.

It would be exciting to TAKE part in what we now CALL the ENLIGHTENMENT at the end of the 18th CENTURY, but with MODERN dentistry.

Today, my HEART and soul lives peacefully for the hope that the 21st CENTURY will have to face a great CHALLENGE, a peaceful struggle for the enlightenment of HUMANITY.