Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

"Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"

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

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

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

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

"Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness."

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

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

"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."

"Perpetual peace is no empty idea, but a practical task, which advances step by step and approaches its goal more nearly."

"It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will."

"Space and time are the pure forms of our sensible intuition."

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

"By a lie, a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man."

"Ingratitude is the essence of vileness."

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

"Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to art."

"Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose."

"The possession of power inevitably corrupts the free judgment of reason."

"Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission."

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

"Autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of duties conforming to them."

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

"There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another."

"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."

"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them."

"The death of dogma is the birth of morality."

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

"We are civilized to the point of excess... but we are still a long way from being moral."

"Beauty is the form of the finality of an object, in so far as it is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose."

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