Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

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

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! ~ Immanuel Kant

...[H]uman reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness. ~ Immanuel Kant

War seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives. ~ Immanuel Kant

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect. ~ Immanuel Kant

Great minds think for themselves. ~ Immanuel Kant

All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law. ~ Immanuel Kant

Finer feeling, which we now wish to consider, is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the *sublime* and that of the *beautiful*. The stirring of each is pleasant, but in different ways. The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or Milton's portrayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment but with horror; on the other hand, the sight of flower strewn meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks, the description of Elysium, or Homer's portrayal of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling. In order that the former impression could occur to us in due strength, we must have *a feeling of the sublime*, and, in order to enjoy the latter well, *a feeling of the beautiful*. Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime; flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in figures are beautiful. Night is sublime; day is beautiful. Temperaments that possess a feeling for the sublime are drawn gradually, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening as the shimmering light of the stars breaks through the brown shadows of night and the lonely moon rises into view, into high feelings of friendship, of disdain for the world, of eternity. The shining day stimulates busy fervor and a feeling of gaiety. The sublime *moves*, the beautiful *charms*. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

A science of all these possible kinds of space [the higher dimensional ones] would undoubtedly be the highest enterprise which a finite understanding could undertake in the field of geometry ... If it is possible that there could be regions with other dimensions, it is very likely that God has somewhere brought them into being. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

In what way will our remote posterity be able to cope with the enormous accumulation of historical records which a few centuries will bequeath to them? ~ Immanuel Kant

[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. ~ Immanuel Kant

It is never too late to become reasonable and wise. ~ Immanuel Kant

[Aristotle formal logic thus far (1787)] has not been able to advance a single step, and hence is to all appearances closed and completed. ~ Immanuel Kant

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope? ~ Immanuel Kant

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

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

...I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

...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. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

Philosophical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from concepts; mathematical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from the construction of concepts. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

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

People who read mainly the Grounding and the Critique often criticize Kant for having his head in the clouds and for not being convincingly capable of dealing with concrete cases. A reading of the Metaphysics of Morals will show anyone how unfounded such criticisms are. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

The sum total of all possible knowledge of God is not possible for a human being, not even through a true revelation. But it is one of the worthiest inquiries to see how far our reason can go in the knowledge of God. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Beneficence is a duty. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

No state at war with another state should engage in hostilities of such a kind as to render mutual confidence impossible when peace will have been made. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they on they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.] ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. ~ Immanuel Kant

Freedom is alone the unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independent of the will and co-action of every other ... ~ Immanuel Kant

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

If now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be universal law, for that is impossible for us; on the contrary, we will that the opposite should remain a universal law, only we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favor or (just for this time only) in favor of our inclination. Consequently, if we considered all cases from one and the same point of view, namely, that of reason, we should find a contradiction in our own will, namely, that a certain principle should be objectively necessary as a universal law, and yet subjectively should not be universal, but admit of exceptions. As, however, we at one moment regard our action from the point of view of a will wholly conformed to reason, and then again look at the same action from the point of view of a will affected by inclination, there is not really any contradiction, but an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. Now, although this cannot be justified in our own impartial judgement, yet it proves that we do really recognize the validity of the categorical imperative and (with all respect for it) only allow ourselves a few exceptions which we think unimportant and forced from us. ~ Immanuel Kant

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself. ~ Immanuel Kant

Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e., a discursive understanding, for which it must of course be contingent what and how different might be the particular that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

If adversity and hopeless grief have quite taken away the taste for life; if an unfortunate man, strong of soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content. ~ Immanuel Kant

Woman wants control, man self-control . ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Human reason is by nature architectonic."

Critique of Pure Reason ~ Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

It was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations. ~ Immanuel Kant

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for. ~ Immanuel Kant

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for unnecessary answers, it not only brings disgrace to the person raising it, but may prompt an incautious listener to give absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, the laughable spectacle of one person milking a he-goat, and another holding the sieve underneath. ~ Immanuel Kant

Maximum individuality within maximum community ~ Immanuel Kant

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled. ~ Immanuel Kant

If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man. ~ Immanuel Kant

The doctrine of morals is an autonomy of practical reason, while the doctrine of virtue is at the same time an autocracy of practical reason. ~ Immanuel Kant

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 ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic) ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. ~ Immanuel Kant

Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the puerility of the ends which we ourselves look upon as great and momentous ... these all so contradict the idea of what men might be if they only would, and are so at variance with our active wish to see them better, that, to avoid hating where one cannot love, it seems but a slight sacrifice to forego all the joys of fellowship with our kind. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [ ... ] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

Don't Shoot is a work of moral philosophy that reads like a crime novel - Immanuel Kant meets Joseph Wambaugh. It's a fascinating, inspiring, and wonderfully well written story of one man's quest to solve a problem no one thought could be solved: the scourge of inner city gang violence This is a vitally important work that has the potential to usher in a new era in policing. ~ John Seabrook

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

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

For now we see that when we conceive ourselves as free we transfer ourselves into the world of understanding as members of it, and recognise the autonomy of the will with its consequence, morality; whereas, if we conceive ourselves as under obligation we consider ourselves as belonging to the world of sense, and at the same time to the world of understanding. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge , purify itself of errors, and progress in general enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, the proper destination of which lies precisely in this progress and the descendants would be fully justified in rejecting those decrees as having been made in an unwarranted and malicious manner.
The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself. ~ Immanuel Kant

Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself. ~ Immanuel Kant

Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end. ~ Immanuel Kant

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

When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any ~ Immanuel Kant

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

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

Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers. ~ Immanuel Kant

I class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether profit be regarded. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

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? ~ Immanuel Kant

All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labor ... Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism. ~ Immanuel Kant

Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue ... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles. ~ Immanuel Kant

The death of dogma is the birth of morality. ~ Immanuel Kant

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. ~ Immanuel Kant

However, one can also cognize the existence of the thing prior to the perception of it, and therefore cognize it comparatively a priori, if only it is connected with some perceptions in accordance with the principles of their empirical connection (the analogies). For in that case the existence of the thing is still connected with our perceptions in a possible experience, and with the guidance of the analogies we can get from our actual perceptions to the thing in the series of possible perceptions. Thus we cognize the existence of a magnetic matter penetrating all bodies from the perception of attracted iron filings, although an immediate perception of this matter is impossible for us given the construction of our organs. For in accordance with the laws of sensibility and the context of our perceptions we could also happen upon the immediate empirical intuition of it in an experience of if our senses, the crudeness of which does not affect the form of possible experience in general, were finer. Thus wherever perception and whatever is appended to it in accordance with empirical laws reaches, there too reaches our cognition of the existence of things. If we do not being with experience, or proceed in accordance with laws of the empirical connection of appearances, then we are only making a vain display of wanting to discover or research the existence of any thing. ~ Immanuel Kant

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