Immanuel Kant Quotes

173 Sourced Quotes

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
Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated.

Immanuel Kant
All appearances have a determinate magnitude (the relation of which to another assignable). The infinite does not appear as such, likewise not the simple. For the appearances are included between two boundaries (points) and are thus themselves determinate magnitudes.

Immanuel Kant
Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

Immanuel Kant
For how is it possible, says that acute man, that when a concept is given me, I can go beyond it and connect with it another which is not contained in it, in such a manner as if that latter necessarily belonged to the former?

Immanuel Kant
Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

Immanuel Kant
Mathematical judgments are always synthetical.

Immanuel Kant
Two things fill me with awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.

Immanuel Kant
In every study of nature there can be only so much genuine science as there is a priori knowledge, by the same token, natural philosophy will contain genuine science only to the extent in which mathematics can be applied to it.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
Mathematics and physics are the two theoretical sciences of reason, which have to determine their objects a priori.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology, and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology, which is incapable of any definite concept.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
All abstract speculations, all knowledge which is dry, however useful it may be, must be abandoned to the laborious and solid mind of man.... For this reason women will never learn geometry.

Immanuel Kant
The sum total of all possible knowledge of God is not possible for a human being, not even through a true revelation. But it is one of the worthiest inquiries to see how far our reason can go in the knowledge of God.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
All cognition of things from mere pure Understanding and Reason is nothing but mere illusion and only in experience is there truth.

Immanuel Kant
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.

Immanuel Kant
Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation.

Immanuel Kant
God has 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.

Immanuel Kant