Immanuel Kant
Do what is right, though the world may perish.Collection: World
All perception is colored by emotion.Collection: Perception
Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.Collection: Reality
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.Collection: Men
The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.Collection: War
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.Collection: Determination
Look closely. The beautiful may be small.Collection: Inspirational
One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there; but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides itself so much on its advantages.Collection: Pride
***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!Collection: Three
Prudence approaches, conscience accuses.Collection: War
The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.Collection: Believe
Men will not understand ... that when they fulfil their duties to men, they fulfil thereby God's commandments; that they are consequently always in the service of God, as long as their actions are moral, and that it is absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise.Collection: Men
Laws always lose in energy what the government gains in extent.Collection: Government
With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.Collection: Peace
So act that anything you do may become universal law.Collection: Carpe Diem
If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man's character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free.Collection: Character
Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form.Collection: Argument
Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.Collection: Reality
Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.Collection: Blood
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.Collection: Knowledge
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 attemptCollection: Beautiful
It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.Collection: Philosophy
[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.Collection: Men
Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?Collection: Assuming
If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.Collection: Exercise
Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.Collection: Mean
In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.Collection: Hands
All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.Collection: Natural
An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.Collection: Done
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.Collection: Love
Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785)Collection: Enlightenment
Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.Collection: Thinking
Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.Collection: Philosophy
The business of philosophy is not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgments of common reason.Collection: Business
The desire which a man has for a woman is not directed towards her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman ; that she is a human being is of no concern to the man; only her sex is the object of his desires.Collection: Women
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.Collection: Men
God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system.Collection: Fashion
Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature.Collection: Science
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.'Collection: War
It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Destiny
It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err — not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all.Collection: Judging
All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.Collection: Fall
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know!Collection: Courage
The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.Collection: Art
Better the whole people perish than that injustice be doneCollection: People
Animals... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.Collection: Mean
Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!Collection: Science