Immanuel Kant Quotes

Honesty is better than any policy.

Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.

Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how should the faculty of knowledge be called into activity, if not by objects which affect our senses and which, on the one hand, produce representations by themselves or on the other, rouse the activity of our understanding to compare, connect, or separate them and thus to convert the raw material of our sensible impressions into knowledge of objects, which we call experience? With respect to time, therefore, no knowledge within us is antecedent to experience, but all knowledge begins with it.
But though all our knowledge begins with experience, is does not follow that it all arises from experience. For it is quite possible that even our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we perceive through impressions, and of that which our own faculty of knowledge (incited by sense impressions) supplies from itself, a supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw material until long practice and rendered us capable of separating one from the other.
It is therefore a question which deserves at least closer investigation and cannot be disposed of at first sight: Whether there is any knowledge independent of all experience and even of all impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called 'a priori' and is distinguished from empirical knowledge, which has its source 'a posteriori', that is, in experience...

It must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here from which it seems impossible to escape. In the order of efficient causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends we may conceive ourselves as subject to these laws because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of will; for freedom and self-legislation of will are both autonomy...

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

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

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

[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.

An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according with which it is decided upon; it depends therefore, not on the realization of the object of action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed.

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

The history of nature . . . begins with good, for it is God's work; the history of freedom begins with badness, for it is man's work.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.
That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind ...

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? (Critique of Pure Reason

This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

I express the principle of one's freedom as a human being in this formula: No one can compel me (in accordance with his beliefs about the welfare of others) to be happy after his fashion.

If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge.

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

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

No one may force anyone to be happy according to his manner of imagining the well-being of other men; instead, everyone may seek his happiness in the way that seems good to him as long as he does not infringe on the freedom of others to pursue a similar purpose, when such freedom may coexist with the freedom of every other man according to a possible and general law.

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.

Enthusiasm is always connected with the senses, whatever be the object that excites it. The true strength of virtue is serenity of mind, combined with a deliberate and steadfast determination to execute her laws. That is the healthful condition of the moral life; on the other hand, enthusiasm, even when excited by representations of goodness, is a brilliant but feverish glow which leaves only exhaustion and languor behind.

Woman wants control, man self-control .

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

I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.

Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.

Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed.

If I am to constrain you by any law, it must be one by which I am also bound.

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

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others, and who is not contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, every one expects and requires from every one else this reference to universal communication of pleasure, as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself.

Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent.

Act in such a way that you will be worthy of being happy.

...[R]eason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly actions of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an example, the feasibility even if which might be very much doubted by one who founds everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by reason; that, for example, even though there might never yet have been a sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity in friendship required of every man...

160Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance.

Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos.

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

It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless.

As soon as we examine suicide from the standpoint of religion we immediately see it in its true light. We have been placed in this world under certain conditions and for specific purposes. But a suicide opposes the purpose of his creator; he arrives in the other world as one who has deserted his post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God. God is our owner; we are his property; his providence works for our good.

Upon the solution of this problem, or upon sufficient proof of the impossibility of synthetical knowledge a priori, depends the existence or downfall of metaphysics.

A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity by man.

A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.

When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.

But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.

...[F]reedom... is a property of all rational beings.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

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

...When he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were the property of things.

Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a general law of nature.

Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infinitely worse than non-existence?

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

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.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

Nature even in chaos cannot proceed otherwise than regularly and according to order.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is: Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that, although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.

Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.

Every beginning is in time, and every limit of extension in space. Space and time, however, exist in the world of sense only. Hence phenomena are only limited in the world conditionally, the world itself, however, is limited neither conditionally nor unconditionally.

never wish to see a just cause defended with unjust means

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.

Would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction?

Each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is gratification.

...[N]ature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end... [so nature's] true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was... imparted to us as a practical... absolutely necessary... faculty.

Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.

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

Here I shall add that the concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time. & Motion, for example, presupposes the perception of something movable. But space considered in itself contains nothing movable; consequently motion must be something which is found in space only through experience -in other words, is an empirical datum.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may 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.

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

If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.

For morality, with regard to its principles of public right (hence in relation to a political code which can be known a priori), has the peculiar feature that the less it makes its conduct depend upon the end it envisages (whether this be a physical or moral advantage), the more it will in general harmonise with this end.

Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated.

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.

We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.

There is no freedom, but everything in the world takes place entirely according to nature....Transcendental freedom is therefore opposed to the law of causality, and represents such a connection of successive states of effective causes, that no unity of experience is possible with it. It is therefore an empty fiction of the mind, and not to be met with in any experience.
We have, therefore, nothing but nature, in which we must try to find the connection and order of cosmical events. Freedom (independence) from the laws of nature is no doubt a deliverance from restraint, but also from the guidance of all rules. For we cannot say that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may enter into the causality of the course of the world, because, if determined by laws, it would not be freedom, but nothing else but nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental freedom differ from each other like legality and lawlessness. The former, no doubt, imposes upon the understanding the difficult task of looking higher and higher for the origin of events in the series of causes, because their causality is always conditioned. In return for this, however, it promises a complete and well-ordered unity of experience; while, on the other side, the fiction of freedom promises, no doubt, to the enquiring mind, rest in the chain of causes, leading him up to an unconditioned causality, which begins to act by itself, but which, as it is blind itself, tears the thread of rules by which alone a

This spirit of freedom is expanding even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will gradually raise themselves from barbarism.

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

Look closely. The beautiful may be small.

At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world.

All perception is colored by emotion.

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

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

Ich kann, weil ich will, was ich muss.

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

Heaven has given human beings three things to balance the odds of life: hope, sleep, and laughter.

The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.

Nothing happens by blind chance.

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

Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs.

The greatest and perhaps only utility of all philosophy of pure reason is thus only negative, namely that it does not serve for expansion, as an organon, but rather, as a discipline, serves for the determination of boundaries, and instead of discovering truth it has only the silent merit of guarding against errors

Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

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

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