Top 327 Quotes & Sayings by Immanuel Kant - Page 2

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

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.

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

The human heart refuses To believe in a universe Without a purpose.

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.

The two great dividers are religion and LANGUAGE

One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.

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

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

Thinking in pictures precedes thinking in words.

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

Melancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.

I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and nurtured the first seeds of good within me. She opened my heart to the lasting impressions of nature; she awakened my understanding and extended my horizon and her percepts exerted an everlasting influence upon the course of my life.

When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any

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

Two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heavens, and the sense of right and wrong in man.

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

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

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

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS that don't have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter.

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

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

The hand is the visible part of the brain.

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.

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

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.

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

Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.

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

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

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

Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs.

All perception is colored by emotion.

Always regard every man as an end in himself, and never use him merely as a means to your ends [i.e., respect that each person has a life and purpose that is their own; do not treat people as objects to be exploited].

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.

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

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

Riches ennoble a man's circumstances, but not himself.

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

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.

Maximum individuality within maximum community

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

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

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

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

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

Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law ? i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself.

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

God, freedom, and immortality are untenable in the light of pure reason.

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.

Art is purposiveness without purpose.

Do what is right, though the world may perish.

Reason can never prove the existence of God.