Immanuel Kant Quotes
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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.
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Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
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All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.
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Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
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Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
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Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!
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Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but, thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fulness and consummation of the inclination to do good.
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Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything.
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But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.
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What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?
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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.
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You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am.
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For it is extremely absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must incline.
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To be is to do.
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May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
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By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.
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Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
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Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.
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In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.
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Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short.
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The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.
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A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.
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Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.
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Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.