Immanuel Kant Quotes

“There is nothing higher than reason.”

“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.”

“Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.”

“Maximum individuality within maximum community”

“[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.”

“In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.”

“Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason.”

“It is presumed that there exists a great unity in nature, in respect of the adequacy of a single cause to account for many different kinds of consequences.”

“The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.”

“If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.”

“A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.”

“Two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heavens, and the sense of right and wrong in man.”

“This spirit of freedom is expanding even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will gradually raise themselves from barbarism.”

“How then is perfection to be sought? Wherein lies our hope? In education, and in nothing else.”

“Everything in nature acts in conformity with law.”

“I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.”

“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.”

“The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.”