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Immanuel Kant
177 quotes
“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This problem is the most difficult and the last to be solved by mankind.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All wars are accordingly so many attempts (not in the intention of man, but in the intention of Nature) to establish new relations among states, and through the destruction or at least the dismemberment of all of them to create new political bodies, which, again, either internally or externally, cannot maintain themselves and which must thus suffer like revolutions; until finally, through the best possible civic constitution and common agreement and legislation in external affairs, a state is created which, like a civic commonwealth, can maintain itself automatically.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely because of a motive to speculation — for investigating the source of the practical basic principles that lie a priori in our reason — but also because morals themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as we are without that clue and supreme norm by which to appraise them correctly...”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Es ist überall nichts in der Welt, ja überhaupt auch außer derselben zu denken möglich, was ohne Einschränkung für gut könnte gehalten werden, als allein ein guter Wille.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ich soll niemals anders verfahren als so, dass ich auch wollen könne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if there never have been actions arising from such pure sources, what is at issue here is not whether this or that happened; that, instead, reason by itself and independently of all appearances commands what ought to happen; that, accordingly, actions of which the world has perhaps so far given no example, and whose very practicability might be very much doubted by one who bases everything on experience, are still inflexibly commanded by reason … because … duty … lies, prior to all experience, in the idea of a reason determing the will by means of apriori grounds.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims. An action that can coexist with the autonomy of the will is permitted; one that does not accord with it is forbidden. A will whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of autonomy is a holy, absolutely good will. The dependence upon the principle of autonomy of a will that is not absolutely good (moral necessitation) is obligation. This, accordingly, cannot be attributed to a holy being. The objective of an action from obligation is called duty.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination, resting on merely empirical grounds,”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Handle so, daß du die Menschheit, sowol in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchest.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Im Reiche der Zwecke hat alles entweder einen Preis oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle kann auch etwas anderes als Äquivalent gesetzt werden; was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin kein Äquivalent verstattet, das hat eine Würde.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 434:32, M. Gregor, trans. (Cambridge: 1998), p. 42
“Die menschliche Vernunft hat hier, wie allerwärts in ihrem reinen Gebrauche, so lange es ihr an Kritik fehlt, vorher alle mögliche unrechte Wege versucht, ehe es ihr gelingt, den einzigen wahren zu treffen.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All natural philosophers, who wished to proceed mathematically in their work, have hence invariably (although unknown to themselves) made use of metaphysical principles, and must make use of such, it matters not how energetically they may otherwise repudiate any claim of metaphysics on their science.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Tr. Bax (1883)
“All true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ...mathematical physicists were thus quite unable to dispense with such metaphysical principles...”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Tr. Bax (1883)
“Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Tr. Bax (1883)
“Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human reason is by nature architectonic.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This proof can at most, therefore, demonstrate the existence of an architect of the world, whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of the material with which he works, but not of a creator of the world, to whom all things are subject.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For it is extremely absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must incline.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it is absurd … to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass ("Dialectic of Teleological Judgment" §75)”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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).”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of “duty.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alles, was ausser dem guten Lebenswandel der Mensch noch thun zu können vermeint, um Gott wohlgefällig zu werden, ist blosser Religionswahn und Afterdienst Gottes.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Die Verehrung mächtiger unsichtbarer Wesen, welche dem hülflosen Menschen durch die natürliche, auf dem Bewusstsein seines Unvermögens gegründete Furcht abgenöthigt wurde, …”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source