Immanuel Kant Quotes

[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehende...

It must be *possible* for the *I think* to accompany all my representations: for otherwise something...

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad i...

Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.

A similar experiment may be tried in metaphysics as regards the *intuition* of objects. If the intui...

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to...

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following que...

The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use...

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts wit...

Metaphysics, a completely isolated and speculative branch of rational knowledge which is raised abov...

El sabio puede cambiar de opinión. El necio, nunca.

This experiment succeeds as hoped and promises to metaphysics, in its first part, which deals with t...

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity th...

Everything in nature acts in conformity with law.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself an identi...

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

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

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgement of reason, and perverts its liberty.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's ...

On the other hand, the moral law, although it gives no such prospect, does provide a fact absolutely...

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a m...

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

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

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whethe...

The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her because she is a human being but because she...

By this freedom the will of a rational being, as belonging to the sensuous world, recognizes itself ...

The true religion is to be posited not in the knowledge or confession of what God allegedly does or ...

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

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life

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

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three foll...

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

If we were to suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible t...

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

We have seen, therefore, that I am not allowed even to *assume*, for the sake of the necessary pract...

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

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

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

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worth...

The death of dogma is the birth of reality.

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

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

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

Our critique is not opposed to the *dogmatic procedure* of reason in its pure knowledge as science (...

Woman wants control, man self-control .

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

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testi...

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

The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old pr...

Freedom is alone the unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; an...

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the ...

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make ...

...new prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking masses.For this enl...

An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot ...

An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot ...

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long sinc...

Anarchy is law and freedom without force.Despotism is law and force without freedom.Barbarism force ...

True politics cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morals, and while politics it...

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opini...

Laughter is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into noth...

[To think for oneself] is the maxim of a reason never passive. The tendency to such passivity, and t...

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely ...

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadil...

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how should the faculty of k...

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity an...

Metaphysics... is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systemati...

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our mind; the first is to receive representati...

(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless ...

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the ...

Philosophical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from concepts mathematical knowledge is know...

...Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, a...

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

If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes ...

An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the ma...

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

High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly muc...

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a...

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

Finer feeling, which we now wish to consider, is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the *sublime* ...

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply...

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

if adversity and hopeless grief have quite taken away the taste for life; if an unfortunate man, str...

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

Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances tha...

...in its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make ...

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as ...

What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every...

Thus he has two standpoints from which he can consider himself...: first, as belonging to the world ...

[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-pe...

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other,...

It must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here from which it seems impossible to esc...