Immanuel Kant Quotes & Sayings

Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason. — Immanuel Kant

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for. — Immanuel Kant

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

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. — Immanuel Kant

Deaths, births, and marriages, considering how much they are separately dependent on the freedom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no law according to which any calculation could be made beforehand of their amount; and yet the yearly registers of these events in great countries prove that they go on with as much conformity to the laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather. — Immanuel Kant

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

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs. — Immanuel Kant

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

[A ruler is merely] the trustee of the rights of other men and he must always stand in dread of having in some way violated these rights. — Immanuel Kant

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled. — Immanuel Kant

Human reason has the peculiar fate ... that it is burdened with questions that it cannot dismiss ... but which it also cannot answer. — Immanuel Kant

Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent. — Immanuel Kant

In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics the various nonmoral feelings are to be made use of; in the elements of moral metaphysics the various moral feelings of men, according to the differences in sex, age, education, and government, of races and climates, are to be employed. — Immanuel Kant

Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated. — Immanuel Kant

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

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. — Immanuel Kant

Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.
"Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals" (1785) — Immanuel Kant

This spirit of freedom is expanding even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will gradually raise themselves from barbarism. — Immanuel Kant

As soon as we examine suicide from the standpoint of religion we immediately see it in its true light. We have been placed in this world under certain conditions and for specific purposes. But a suicide opposes the purpose of his creator; he arrives in the other world as one who has deserted his post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God. God is our owner; we are his property; his providence works for our good. — Immanuel Kant

True politics cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morals, and while politics itself is a difficult art, its combination with morals is no art at all; for morals cuts the Gordian knot which politics cannot solve as soon as the two are in conflict. — Immanuel Kant

Even if, by some especially unfortunate fate or by the niggardly provision of stepmotherly nature, [the good will] should be wholly lacking in the power to accomplish its purpose; if with the greatest effort it should yet achieve nothing, and only the good will should remain (not, to be sure, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all the means in our power), yet would it, like a jewel, still shine by its own light as something which has its full value in itself. — Immanuel Kant

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith. — Immanuel Kant

[Standing armies] constantly threaten other nations with war by giving the appearance that they are prepared for it, which goads nations into competing with one another in the number of men under arms, and this practice knows no bounds. And since the costs related to maintaining peace will in this way finally become greater than those of a short war, standing armies are the cause of wars of aggression that are intended to end burdensome expenditures. Moreover, paying men to kill or be killed appears to use them as mere machines and tools in the hands of another (the nation), which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity. — Immanuel Kant

Follows. - If, as is inevitably the case under this constitution, the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared, it is very natural that they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise. For this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war, such as doing the fighting themselves, supplying the costs of the war from their own resources, painfully making good the ensuing devastation, and, as the crowning evil, having to take upon themselves a burden of debt which will embitter peace itself and which can never be paid off on account of the constant threat of new wars. — Immanuel Kant

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed. — Immanuel Kant

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

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

***Three Conditions of Happiness*** If you have work to do If you have someone you love If You have hope Then You are Happy now! — Immanuel Kant

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity. — Immanuel Kant

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope? — Immanuel Kant

The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will. — Immanuel Kant

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. — Immanuel Kant

Objectively (i.e., in theory) there is utterly no conflict between morality and politics. But subjectively (in the self-seeking inclinations of men, which, because they are not based on maxims of reason, must not be called the [sphere of] practice [Praxis]) this conflict will always remain, as well it should; for it serves as the whetstone of virtue, whose true courage (according to the principle, "tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito")35 in the present case consists not so much in resolutely standing up to the evils and sacrifices that must be taken on; rather, it consists in detecting, squarely facing, and conquering the deceit of the evil principle in ourselves, which is the more dangerously devious and treacherous because it excuses all our transgressions with an appeal to human nature's frailty. — Immanuel Kant

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists. — Immanuel Kant

Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind. — Immanuel Kant

Such is the genesis of these general convictions of mankind, so far as they depend on rational grounds; and this public property not only remains undisturbed, but is even raised to greater importance, by the doctrine that the schools have no right to arrogate to themselves a more profound insight into a matter of general human concernment than that to which the great mass of men, ever held by us in the highest estimation, can without difficulty attain, and that the schools should, therefore, confine themselves to the elaboration of these universally comprehensible and, from a moral point of view, amply satisfactory proofs. — Immanuel Kant

Things which we see are not by themselves what we see ... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them. — Immanuel Kant

If the truth shall kill them, let them die. — Immanuel Kant

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

I class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether profit be regarded. — Immanuel Kant

Enthusiasm is always connected with the senses, whatever be the object that excites it. The true strength of virtue is serenity of mind, combined with a deliberate and steadfast determination to execute her laws. That is the healthful condition of the moral life; on the other hand, enthusiasm, even when excited by representations of goodness, is a brilliant but feverish glow which leaves only exhaustion and languor behind. — Immanuel Kant

The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience — Immanuel Kant

In what way will our remote posterity be able to cope with the enormous accumulation of historical records which a few centuries will bequeath to them? — Immanuel Kant

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

Job says what he thinks and feels, and how every person would likely feel in his position. His friends, on the other hand, talk as if they were secretly being watched by the powerful Ruler whose case is open to their verdict, and as if, in making their verdict, they cared more about winning His favor than about the truth. This trickery of maintaining something just to keep up appearances, contrary to their true beliefs, feigning a conviction they did not have, stands in stark contrast to Job's candor, which is so far removed from flattery that it borders on audacity, but nevertheless casts him in a very favorable light. — Immanuel Kant

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. — Immanuel Kant

Things which as effects presuppose others as causes cannot be reciprocally at the same time causes of these. — Immanuel Kant

...by saying that the former was only concerned with quality, the latter only with quantity, mistook cause for effect. — Immanuel Kant

Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray. — Immanuel Kant

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas. — Immanuel Kant

Our reason has this peculiar fate that, with reference to one class of its knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend the powers of human reason. — Immanuel Kant

Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the puerility of the ends which we ourselves look upon as great and momentous ... these all so contradict the idea of what men might be if they only would, and are so at variance with our active wish to see them better, that, to avoid hating where one cannot love, it seems but a slight sacrifice to forego all the joys of fellowship with our kind. — Immanuel Kant

[To think for oneself] is the maxim of a reason never passive. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent nature as not subject to the rules that the understanding places at its basis by means of its own essential law, i.e. is superstition. Deliverance from superstition is called enlightenment; because although this name belongs to deliverance from prejudices in general, yet superstition especially (in sensu eminenti) deserves to be called a prejudice. For the blindness in which superstition places us, which it even imposes on us as an obligation, makes the need of being guided by others, and the consequent passive state of our reason, peculiarly noticeable. — Immanuel Kant

We now concern ourselves with a labor less spectacular but nevertheless not unrewarding: that of making the terrain for these majestic moral edifices level and firm enough to be built upon; for under this ground there are all sorts of passageways, such as moles might have dug, left over from reason's vain but confident treasure hunting, that make every building insecure. (A319/B377) — Immanuel Kant

Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence. — Immanuel Kant

All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation. — Immanuel Kant

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.
That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind ... — Immanuel Kant

Nature even in chaos cannot proceed otherwise than regularly and according to order. — Immanuel Kant

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable. — Immanuel Kant

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself. — 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. — Immanuel Kant

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

...[T]o be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may often be very advantageous to me, although to abide by it is certainly safer. — Immanuel Kant

What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every example of it presented to me must first itself be judged by moral principles in order to decide if it is fit to serve as an original example...even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him to be such. — Immanuel Kant

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him. He has even become fond of it and for the time being is incapable of employing his own intelligence, because he has never been allowed to make the attempt. Statutes and formulas, these mechanical tools of a serviceable use, or rather misuse, of his natural faculties, are the ankle-chains of a continuous immaturity. Whoever threw it off would make an uncertain jump over the smallest trench because he is not accustomed to such free movement. Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind. — Immanuel Kant

We ourselves introduce that order and regularity in the appearance which we entitle "nature". We could never find them in appearances had we not ourselves, by the nature of our own mind, originally set them there. — Immanuel Kant

High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible. — Immanuel Kant

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

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. — Immanuel Kant

Here then we see philosophy brought to a critical position, since it has to be firmly fixed, notwithstanding that it has nothing to support it in heaven or earth. Here it must show its purity as absolute director of its own laws, not the herald of those which are whispered to it by an implanted sense or who knows what tutelary nature. Although these may be better than nothing, yet they can never afford principles dictated by reason, which must have their source wholly a priori and thence their commanding authority, expecting everything from the supremacy of the the law and due respect for it, nothing from inclination, or else condemning the man to self-contempt and inward abhorrence. — Immanuel Kant

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly. — Immanuel Kant

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

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. — Immanuel Kant

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector. — Immanuel Kant

...[I]f I know that it is only by this process that the intended operation can be performed, then to say that if I fully will the operation, I also will the action required for it, is an analytical proposition... — Immanuel Kant

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity. — Immanuel Kant

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility — Immanuel Kant

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

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. — Immanuel Kant

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. — Immanuel Kant

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. — Immanuel Kant

Here I shall add that the concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time. & Motion, for example, presupposes the perception of something movable. But space considered in itself contains nothing movable; consequently motion must be something which is found in space only through experience -in other words, is an empirical datum. — Immanuel Kant

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

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience. — Immanuel Kant

Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, 'War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.' — Immanuel Kant

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

The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. * — Immanuel Kant

The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness. — Immanuel Kant

That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion. — Immanuel Kant

Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even morality, etc. do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space left over reserved for pure and speculative reason, the emptiness of which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere pastime undertaken in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which, in accordance with its nature, requires something that can satisfy it and does not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations. — Immanuel Kant

Anarchy is law and freedom without force.
Despotism is law and force without freedom.
Barbarism force without freedom and law.
Republicanism is force with freedom and law. — Immanuel Kant

Lithuanian nation must be saved, as it is the key to all the riddles - not only philology, but also in history - to solve the puzzle. — Immanuel Kant

Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. — Immanuel Kant

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason. — Immanuel Kant

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

Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e., a discursive understanding, for which it must of course be contingent what and how different might be the particular that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. — Immanuel Kant

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

Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience. — Immanuel Kant

As a matter of fact, no other language in the world has received such praise as the Lithuanian language. The garlands of high honour have been taken to Lithuanian people for inventing, elaborating, and introducing the most highly developed human speech with its beautiful and clear phonology. Moreover, according to comparative philology, the Lithuanian language is best qualified to represent the primitive Aryan civilization and culture. — Immanuel Kant

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. — Immanuel Kant