Immanuel Kant Quotes
-
If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.
-
Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.
-
Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him to leave ease... and throw himself into roils and labors.
-
For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.
-
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.
-
By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.
-
An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.
-
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.
-
If we knew that god exists, such knowledge would make morality impossible. For, if we acted morally from fear or fright, or confident of a reward, then this would not be moral. It would be enlightened selfishness.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.
-
Each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is gratification.
-
Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.
-
Art is purposiveness without purpose.
-
Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes.
-
In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion.
-
The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth.
-
The two great dividers are religion and LANGUAGE.
-
So act that anything you do may become universal law.
-
The only thing permanent is change.
-
Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.
-
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.