Immanuel Kant Quotes

173 Sourced Quotes

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 as having reached morality — for that, much is lacking.

Immanuel Kant
Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
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).

Immanuel Kant
The more one presupposes that his own power will suffice him to realize what he desires the more practical is that desire. When I treat a man contemptuously, I can inspire him with no practical desire to appreciate my grounds of truth. When I treat any one as worthless, I can inspire him with no desire to do right.

Immanuel Kant
The master is himself an animal, and needs a master.

Immanuel Kant
If justice perishes, there is no further point in men living on earth.

Immanuel Kant
The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

Immanuel Kant
Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.

Immanuel Kant
As everybody likes to be honored, so people imagine that God also wants to be honored. They forget that the fulfillment of duty towards men is the only honor adequate to him.

Immanuel Kant
Beneficence is a duty. He who often practices this, and sees his beneficent purpose succeed, comes at last really to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," this does not mean, "Thou shalt first of all love, and by means of love (in the next place) do him good"; but: "Do good to thy neighbour, and this beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit of inclination to beneficence)."

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
The guardians who have kindly undertaken the supervision will see to it that by far the largest part of mankind, including the entire "beautiful sex," should consider the step into maturity, not only as difficult but as very dangerous.
After having made their domestic animals dumb and having carefully prevented these quiet creatures from daring to take any step beyond the lead-strings to which they have fastened them, these guardians then show them the danger which threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone.

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

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.

Immanuel Kant
Each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is gratification.

Immanuel Kant
Pure mathematics can never deal with the possibility, that is to say, with the possibility of an intuition answering to the conceptions of the things. Hence it cannot touch the question of cause and effect, and consequently, all the finality there observed must always be regarded simply as formal, and never as a physical end.

Immanuel Kant
Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

Immanuel Kant
I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.

Immanuel Kant
Time was, when she [metaphysics] was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honor. Now, it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her.

Immanuel Kant
The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman. That she is a human being is of no concern to him.

Immanuel Kant
Deaths, births, and marriages, considering how much they are separately dependent on the freedom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no law according to which any calculation could be made beforehand of their amount; and yet the yearly registers of these events in great countries prove that they go on with as much conformity to the laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather.

Immanuel Kant
In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.

Immanuel Kant
I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy.

Immanuel Kant
In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics. In Morris Kline

Immanuel Kant
All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.

Immanuel Kant
A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity by man.

Immanuel Kant
We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

Immanuel Kant
It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless.

Immanuel Kant