Immanuel Kant Quotes
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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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Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!
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I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge.
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Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.
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Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale.
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The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.
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Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.
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The infinitude of creation is great enough to make a world, or a Milky Way of worlds, look in comparison with it what a flower or an insect does in comparison with the Earth.
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I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.
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Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained.
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It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.
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Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end. - 'Metaphysical Principles of Virtue.
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That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion.
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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.
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Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.
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Each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is gratification.
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The ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause.
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Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
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Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth.
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Melancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.
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The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.
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Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.
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There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
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Maximum individuality within maximum community.