Immanuel Kant
The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experienceCollection: Math
Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.Collection: Law
The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.Collection: Civilization
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.Collection: Yellow
Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.Collection: Law
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.Collection: Song
Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end. - 'Metaphysical Principles of VirtueCollection: Adoption
Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos.Collection: Nature
All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Men
[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.Collection: Psychology
Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!Collection: Immature
Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation.Collection: Art
By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.Collection: Lying
Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.Collection: Understanding
I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.Collection: Law
Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibilityCollection: Choices
Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.Collection: Sparks
Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Religious
Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but, thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fulness and consummation of the inclination to do good.Collection: Practice
What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.Collection: Inspirational
The instruction of children should aim gradually to combine knowing and doing. Among all sciences mathematics seems to be the only one of a kind to satisfy this aim most completely.Collection: Children
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.Collection: Life
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.Collection: Heartfelt
Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.Collection: Nature
There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).Collection: Teacher
Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.Collection: Teacher
Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him to leave ease... and throw himself into roils and labors.Collection: Men
Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.Collection: Children
Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.Collection: Words Of Wisdom
Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are) it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Justice
Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.Collection: Reason
Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).Collection: Spring
Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.Collection: Mean
Nature even in chaos cannot proceed otherwise than regularly and according to order.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Philosophy
Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy) Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism) Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism) Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)Collection: Law
The existence of the Bible is the greatest blessing which humanity ever experienced.Collection: Blessing
It is presumed that there exists a great unity in nature, in respect of the adequacy of a single cause to account for many different kinds of consequences.Collection: Nature
He who has made great moral progress ceases to prayCollection: Religion
In the mere concept of one thing it cannot be found any character of its existence.Collection: Character
I learned to honor human beings, and I would find myself far more useless than the common laborer if I did not believe that this consideration could impart to all others a value establishing the rights of humanity.Collection: Believe
I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.Collection: Encounters
Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.Collection: Mean
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 and the moral law within.Collection: Science
There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.Collection: Waste
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.Collection: Struggle