Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

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

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

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

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

The existence of the Bible is the greatest blessing which humanity ever experienced.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

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.

Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.

The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth

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.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

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

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

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

Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings

Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.

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

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

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

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

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.

Reason can never prove the existence of God.

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

Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent.

Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

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

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?

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

If we could see ourselves... as we really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community which neither began at birth nor will end with the death of the body.

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.

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.

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

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

Heaven has given human beings three things to balance the odds of life: hope, sleep, and laughter.

Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained.

The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.

Beneficence is a duty.

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.

Prudence approaches, conscience accuses.

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

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

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray

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.

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

Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity.

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