Immanuel Kant Quotes

“A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.”

“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.”

“Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!”

“This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.”

“***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!”

“The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.”

“Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.”

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

“Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.”

“If I am to constrain you by any law, it must be one by which I am also bound.”

“Every human being should always be treated as an end and never as a mere instrument.”

“All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.”

“Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.”

“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”

“It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.”

“What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?”

“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”

“Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.”

“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].”

“Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.”

“Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infinitely worse than non-existence?”

“[S]uppose the mind of [a] friend of humanity were clouded over with his own grief, extinguishing all sympathetic participation in the fate of others; he still has the resources to be beneficent to those suffering distress, but the distress of others does not touch him because he is sufficiently busy with his own; and now, where no inclination any longer stimulates him to it, he tears himself out of his deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination, solely from duty.”

“All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”

“When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.”

“I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and nurtured the first seeds of good within me. She opened my heart to the lasting impressions of nature; she awakened my understanding and extended my horizon and her percepts exerted an everlasting influence upon the course of my life.”