Immanuel Kant Quotes
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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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What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.
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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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Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
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Im Reiche der Zwecke hat alles entweder einen Preis oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle kann auch etwas anderes als Äquivalent gesetzt werden; was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin kein Äquivalent verstattet, das hat eine Würde.
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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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Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs.
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Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
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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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The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
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Reason can never prove the existence of God.
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Freedom is that faculty that enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.
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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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God, freedom, and immortality are untenable in the light of pure reason.
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Men will not understand … that when they fulfil their duties to men, they fulfil thereby God's commandments; that they are consequently always in the service of God, as long as their actions are moral, and that it is absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise.
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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.
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All appearances have a determinate magnitude (the relation of which to another assignable). The infinite does not appear as such, likewise not the simple. For the appearances are included between two boundaries (points) and are thus themselves determinate magnitudes.
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A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.
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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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Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.
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All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.
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Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
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It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless.
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Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings.