Kant's aim was to develop a religion within the boundaries of mere reason (that is, reason unaided by special empirical revelation) and then to ask about existing ecclesiastical faith (especially about Christianity, and the Lutheran Christianity of his time and place) how this revealed faith must be interpreted if it is to be reconciled with reason, and even seen as a wider (though morally optional) extension of a religion of reason.

Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future.

We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of nature.

It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.

Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.

We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.

Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.