Immanuel Kant Quotes

The business of philosophy is not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgments of common reason.

Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.

Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease

Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale.

One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.

A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral.

All human cognition begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to conceptions, and ends with ideas.

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Give me matter and i will build a world out of it.

But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

Things which as effects presuppose others as causes cannot be reciprocally at the same time causes of these.

The world will by no means perish by a diminution in the number of evil men.

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.

The human heart refuses To believe in a universe Without a purpose.

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

Woman wants control, man self-control .

God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system.

Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.
"Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals" (1785)

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature.

Everything in nature acts in conformity with law.

We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility

There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.

Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.

You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am

Maturity is having the courage to use one's own intelligence!

All duties depend as regards the kind of obligation (not the object of their action) upon the one principle.

The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.

It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err - not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all.

All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.

The only thing permanent is change.

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience

The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.

Man desires concord; but nature know better what is good for his species; she desires discord.

So act that anything you do may become universal law.

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

No one can be compelled by law to be beneficent (though he may be taxed and this money then distributed in welfare payments),

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

Two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heavens, and the sense of right and wrong in man.

Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes

Are - and yet refer to something permanent, which must, therefore, be distinct from all my representations and external to me, the existence

...whose true object is to shed the clearest light on every step which reason takes.

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild..

...by saying that the former was only concerned with quality, the latter only with quantity, mistook cause for effect.

Animals ... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.

Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.

Human reason has the peculiar fate ... that it is burdened with questions that it cannot dismiss ... but which it also cannot answer.

The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

[R]eason is ... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will ...

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Nothing happens by blind chance.

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws.

[A ruler is merely] the trustee of the rights of other men and he must always stand in dread of having in some way violated these rights.

Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.

The two great dividers are religion and LANGUAGE

The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.

The hand is the visible part of the brain.

Have the courage to use your own understanding! - that is the motto of enlightenment.

Honesty is better than any policy.

With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.

The main point of enlightenment is man's release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.

What might be said of things in themselves, separated from all relationship to our senses, remains for us absolutely unknown

From such crooked timber as humanity is made of, no straight thing was ever constructed.

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

In the mere concept of one thing it cannot be found any character of its existence.

The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.

Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.

By a lie, a man ... annihilates his dignity as a man.

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.

If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.

There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.

Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done

Treaty of Peace Shall Be Held Valid in Which There Is Tacitly Reserved Matter for a Future War;

A learned woman might just as well have a beard, for that expresses in a more recognizable form the profundity for which she strives.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.