Immanuel Kant Quotes

“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.”

“To a high degree we are, through art and science, cultured. We are civilized - perhaps too much for our own good - in all sorts of social grace and decorum. But to consider ourselves ashaving reached morality - for that, much is lacking.”

“Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.”

“I am myself by inclination an investigator.”

“No state at war with another state should engage in hostilities of such a kind as to render mutual confidence impossible when peace will have been made.”

“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.”

“The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.”

“Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized comes, at length, really to love him to whom he has done good.”

“If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.”

“An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.”

“Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.”

“The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.”

“If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.”

“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”

“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.”

“It is through good education that all the good in the world arises.”

“The hand is the visible part of the brain.”

“The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.”

“Riches ennoble a man's circumstances, but not himself.”

“Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.”

“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.”

“Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done”

“If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death.”

“Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him to leave ease... and throw himself into roils and labors.”

“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.”