“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

Source: In the Forest

The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970)
The Stainless Steel Rat
Context: Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I've killed in self-defence, I'll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines we have come a long way and life on the civilised worlds is better than it was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realisation that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences.

Source: A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

John Cumming trans., p. 7.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

John Cumming trans., p. 7
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"
Collected Poems (1954)
Context: We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Source: This Immortal (1965), p. 83