150 Quotes by Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant stands as an intellectual titan whose philosophical ideas have indelibly shaped modern thought. Central to his philosophy is the concept of the categorical imperative, a moral principle advocating for ethical actions rooted in universal principles rather than personal desires.
Kant's critical philosophy revolutionized epistemology by questioning the nature of knowledge and the limits of human understanding. His works, such as "Critique of Pure Reason," navigated the intricate terrain between empirical knowledge and metaphysical speculation. Kant's legacy extends beyond the realm of philosophy, permeating disciplines like ethics, political theory, and aesthetics.
His emphasis on reason as the foundation for human agency underscores his belief in humanity's capacity for autonomous and rational decision-making, leaving an enduring imprint on the philosophical landscape.
Immanuel Kant Quotes
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. (Meaning)
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. (Meaning)
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. (Meaning)
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. (Meaning)
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. (Meaning)
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. (Meaning)
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. (Meaning)
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. (Meaning)
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. (Meaning)
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. (Meaning)
In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so. (Meaning)
Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding. (Meaning)
The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life. (Meaning)
The death of dogma is the birth of morality. (Meaning)
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. (Meaning)
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (Meaning)
The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without a purpose. (Meaning)
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. (Meaning)
Ingratitude is the essence of vileness. (Meaning)
It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably. (Meaning)
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason. (Quote Meaning)
By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man. (Meaning)
All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us. (Quote Meaning)
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made. (Meaning)
Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for. (Quote Meaning)
We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without. (Meaning)
But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents. (Quote Meaning)
Do the right thing because it is right. (Meaning)
The only thing permanent is change. (Quote Meaning)
Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. (Meaning)
Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything (Quote Meaning)
Great minds think for themselves. (Meaning)
Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard. (Quote Meaning)
The hand is the visible part of the brain. (Meaning)
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on. (Quote Meaning)
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. (Meaning)
Do what is right, though the world may perish. (Quote Meaning)
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild. (Meaning)
Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! (Quote Meaning)
One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him. (Meaning)
The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason. (Quote Meaning)
Art is purposiveness without purpose. (Meaning)
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. (Quote Meaning)
But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows. (Meaning)
Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands. (Quote Meaning)
An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty. (Meaning)
All our knowledge begins with the senses... (Quote Meaning)
Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.
If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
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 me and the moral law within me.
Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.
Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes.
You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am.
The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Do the right thing because it is right.
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.
But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.
A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.
There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
The only thing permanent is change.
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
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.
Look closely. The beautiful may be small.
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.
Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything
All perception is colored by emotion.
I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.
Always regard every man as an end in himself, and never use him merely as a means to your ends [i.e., respect that each person has a life and purpose that is their own; do not treat people as objects to be exploited].
Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.
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.
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
THERE ARE TWO THINGS that don't have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter.
It is never too late to become reasonable and wise.
Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.
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.
In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.
The human heart refuses To believe in a universe Without a purpose.
The two great dividers are religion and LANGUAGE
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.
Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
There is nothing higher than reason.
Great minds think for themselves.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know!
The hand is the visible part of the brain.
The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.
All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785)
Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, 'War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.'
If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man's character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free.
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.
Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!
A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.
Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.
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.
Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt
By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.
Honesty is better than any policy.
Man's duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.
It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.
Thinking in pictures precedes thinking in words.
The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young.
Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.
The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
***Three Conditions of Happiness*** If you have work to do If you have someone you love If You have hope Then You are Happy now!
Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.
It is through good education that all the good in the world arises.
Maturity is having the courage to use one's own intelligence!
The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.
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.
Art is purposiveness without purpose.
No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law ? i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself.
The ultimate destiny of the human race is the greatest moral perfection, provided that it is achieved through human freedom, whereby alone man is capable of the greatest happiness.
If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.
The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
Marriage is the union of two people of different sexes with a view to the mutual possession of each other's sexual attributes for the duration of their lives.
When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any
Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature.
Do what is right, though the world may perish.
Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.
God, freedom, and immortality are untenable in the light of pure reason.
God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system.
Maximum individuality within maximum community
If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.
Human reason is by nature architectonic.
The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth
I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.
Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?
Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.
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.
Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.
Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.
If I am to constrain you by any law, it must be one by which I am also bound.
It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.
There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.
The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.
The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.
Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings
The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.
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.
Reason can never prove the existence of God.
Heaven has given human beings three things to balance the odds of life: hope, sleep, and laughter.
The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.
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.
Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.
Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form.
Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.
If we could see ourselves... as we really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community which neither began at birth nor will end with the death of the body.
All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
Freedom is that faculty that enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.
Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained.
The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.
Act in such a way that you will be worthy of being happy.
After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.
Beneficence is a duty.
Prudence approaches, conscience accuses.
Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.
Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.
Two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heavens, and the sense of right and wrong in man.
Melancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.
The desire which a man has for a woman is not directed towards her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman ; that she is a human being is of no concern to the man; only her sex is the object of his desires.
The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.
The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.
Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.
The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.
Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).
Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.
Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.
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.
Riches ennoble a man's circumstances, but not himself.
All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.
― Immanuel Kant Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
