Immanuel Kant Quotes

There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.

Beneficence is a duty.

All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labor... Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism.

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt

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

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.

Every human being should always be treated as an end and never as a mere instrument.

The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young.

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.

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.

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

The only thing permanent is change.

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.

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

We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.

A science of all these possible kinds of space [the higher dimensional ones] would undoubtedly be the highest enterprise which a finite understanding could undertake in the field of geometry... If it is possible that there could be regions with other dimensions, it is very likely that God has somewhere brought them into being.

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

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.

Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes

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

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

The hand is the visible part of the brain.

Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.

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.

Honesty is better than any policy.

Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

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

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

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

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

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

Laziness and cowardice explain why so many men. . . remain under a life-long tutelage and why it is so easy for some men to set themselves up as the guardians of all the rest. . . If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides my diet, I need not trouble myself. If I am willing to pay, I need not think. Others will do it for me.

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.

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.

The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.

It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.