Immanuel Kant Quotes
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Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.
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The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
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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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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.
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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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Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
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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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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
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Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.
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There must be a seed of every good thing in the character of men, otherwise no one can bring it out. Lacking that, analogous motives, honor, etc., are substituted. Parents are in the habit of looking out for the inclinations, for the talents and dexterity, perhaps for the disposition of their children, and not at all for their heart or character.
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Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
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Reason can never prove the existence of God.
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Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.
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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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The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end.
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Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
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All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.
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The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.
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Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.
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The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.
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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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Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings.
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Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
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It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.