The authors may be in this enviable state of enlightenment, but most readers will not have a clue what they are on about.

ECONOMIST: Understanding the universe

The parting of ways between Europe and China came, in his view, not with the Renaissance or the Enlightenment but with the industrial revolution.

ECONOMIST: China's future

Their leaders were learned and judicious men, a minority whose excellence derived not from popular opinion or emotion but from the Enlightenment and its pro-reason virtues.

FORBES: Another Illiberal Democracy -- In Egypt

Requiring more than a thousand moving parts, Vaucanson's duck was not only a mechanical marvel, but also begged some very Enlightenment-era intellectual questions: Was there anything more to life than mechanics and plumbing?

FORBES

These ideas grew out of the European enlightenment, but today they are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not as the birthright of Americans or Westerners, but of people everywhere.

CNN: AllPolitics - FDCH Transcript