Immanuel Kant Quotes
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It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.
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I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?
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Great minds think for themselves.
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The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.
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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.
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Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.
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Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.
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The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.
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Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason.
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Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.
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The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend - and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.
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An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.
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All our knowledge begins with the senses...
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The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.
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It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.
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Good and strong will. Mechanism must precede science (learning). Also in morals and religion? Too much discipline makes one narrow and kills proficiency. Politeness belongs, not to discipline, but to polish, and thus comes last.
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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.
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Laziness and cowardice explain why so many men. . . remain under a life-long tutelage and why it is so easy for some men to set themselves up as the guardians of all the rest. . . If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides my diet, I need not trouble myself. If I am willing to pay, I need not think. Others will do it for me.
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The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment among men...
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Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?
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Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
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Die Verehrung mächtiger unsichtbarer Wesen, welche dem hülflosen Menschen durch die natürliche, auf dem Bewusstsein seines Unvermögens gegründete Furcht abgenöthigt wurde, …
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When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person as servant, defrauds his master self- interest and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of 'duty.'
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To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.