Top 327 Quotes & Sayings by Immanuel Kant

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

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

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

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

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

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

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.'

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

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

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

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

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

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

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.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

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

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.

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?

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

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

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

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

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.

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

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

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

To be is to do.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

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.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

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

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

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

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

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

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.

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

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

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

You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am

Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth.

Great minds think for themselves.

Look closely. The beautiful may be small.

The only thing permanent is change.

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

Do the right thing because it is right.

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

It is never too late to become reasonable and wise.

Honesty is better than any policy.

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.

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.

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

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

Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything

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