Quotes by Immanuel Kant

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

All our knowledge begins with the senses.

There is nothing higher than reason.

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Good and strong will. Mechanism must precede science (learning). Also in morals and religion? Too much discipline makes one narrow and kills proficiency. Politeness belongs, not to discipline, but to polish, and thus comes last.

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live.

I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

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

If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Anarchy is law and freedom without force. Despotism is law and force without freedom. Barbarism force without freedom and law. Republicanism is force with freedom and law.

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.

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray.

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

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy) Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism) Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism) Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic).

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.

Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.

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

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

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

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

I am myself by inclination an investigator.

The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness.

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion.

Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease.

That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion.

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form.

Have the courage to use your own reason --
that is the motto of enlightenment.

Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.

The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.

All trades, arts, and handiwork have gained by division of labor, namely, when, instead of one man doing everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of work distinct from others in the treatment it requires, so as to be able to perform it with greater facility and in the greatest perfection.

It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.

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

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.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

Ghost stories are always listened to and well received in private, but pitilessly disavowed in public. For my own part, ignorant as I am of the way in which the human spirit enters the world and the way in which he goes out of it, I dare not deny the truth of many such narratives.

Cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.

Freedom is that faculty that enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.

There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.

At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world.

An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.

The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

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

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.

Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.

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.

We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.

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.

Animals... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.

If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on... then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.

The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.

Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale.

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.

The instruction of children should aim gradually to combine knowing and doing. Among all sciences mathematics seems to be the only one of a kind to satisfy this aim most completely.

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility.

The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.

Things which we see are not by themselves what we see ... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them.

The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

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.

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!

Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.

A ruler is merely the trustee of the rights of other men and he must always stand in dread of having in some way violated these rights.

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

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.

Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being.

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.

The ultimate destiny of the human race is the greatest moral perfection, provided that it is achieved through human freedom, whereby alone man is capable of the greatest happiness.

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

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.

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.

Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.

I learned to honor human beings, and I would find myself far more useless than the common laborer if I did not believe that this consideration could impart to all others a value establishing the rights of humanity.

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.

We have no reason for assuming the form of such a thing to be still partly dependent on blind mechanism, for with such confusion of heterogeneous principles every reliable rule for estimating things would disappear.

For if phenomena are things by themselves, freedom cannot be saved. Nature in that case is the complete and sufficient cause determining every event, and its condition is always contained in that series of phenomena only which, together with their effect, are necessary under the law of nature.

But freedom is a mere Idea, the objective reality of which can in no wise be shown according to the laws of nature, and consequently not in any possible experience; and for this reason it can never be comprehended or understood, because we cannot support it by any sort of example or analogy.

Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end.

There are such manifold forms of nature; there are many modifications of the general transcendental concepts of nature that are left undetermined by the laws furnished by pure intellect a priori because these laws only concern the general possibility of nature as an object of the senses.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless.

The infinitude of creation is great enough to make a world, or a Milky Way of worlds, look in comparison with it what a flower or an insect does in comparison with the Earth.

The sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favor it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity.

I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.

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?

The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.

In its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct. Hence it is as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reasoning to argue freedom away.

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.

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).

Natural science physics contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles. ... Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Nothing is required for this enlightenment except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use with and publicly in all matters.

We ourselves introduce that order and regularity in the appearance which we entitle nature. We could never find them in appearances had we not ourselves, by the nature of our own mind, originally set them there.

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.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

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.

Marriage...is the union of two people of different sexes with a view to the mutual possession of each other's sexual attributes for the duration of their lives.

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge.

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.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

If we knew that god exists, such knowledge would make morality impossible. For, if we acted morally from fear or fright, or confident of a reward, then this would not be moral. It would be enlightened selfishness.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.

It is never too late to become reasonable and wise.

The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.

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

Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos.

A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.

Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Dare to think!

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

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

Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature.

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.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

If the truth shall kill them, let them die.

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.

If, like Hume, I had all manner of adornment in my power, I would still have reservations about using them. It is true that some readers will be scared off by dryness. But isn't it necessary to scare off some if in their case the matter would end up in bad hands?

Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

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

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.

Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.

Perpetual peace is only found in the graveyard.

Maturity is having the courage to use one's own intelligence.

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

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.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.'

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.