Immanuel Kant quotes:

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

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

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

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

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.

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.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

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.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

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.

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.

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

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.

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.

An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

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.

Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity.

When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.

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.

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.

War seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives.

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason."

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?

Ghost stories are always listened to and well received in private, but pitilessly disavowed in public. For my own part, ignorant as I am of the way in which the human spirit enters the world and the way in which he goes out of it, I dare not deny the truth of many such narratives.

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!

All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labor... Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism.

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

A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.

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 Virtue

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.

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.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

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 attempt

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!

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.

We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

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.

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

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

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.

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.

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

Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

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.

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.

Natural science physics contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles. ... Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.

The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.

After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.

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

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.

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

Woman wants control, man self-control .

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

Jeg skal alltid handle slik at den regelen jeg handler etter kunne gjelde som allmenn lov.

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.

If we were to suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could have been created on earth at all.

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

Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

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

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

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

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.

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

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.

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

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.

It is never too late to become reasonable and wise.

[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.

Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos.

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.

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.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

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.'

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

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

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...

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...

But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

If the truth shall kill them, let them die.

You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

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.

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

Do the right thing because it is right.

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

All perception is colored by emotion.

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.

There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

Laziness and cowardice explain why so many men. . . remain under a life-long tutelage and why it is so easy for some men to set themselves up as the guardians of all the rest. . . If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides my diet, I need not trouble myself. If I am willing to pay, I need not think. Others will do it for me.

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

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

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

Look closely. The beautiful may be small.

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.

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

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.

The two great dividers are religion and LANGUAGE