Immanuel Kant > Quotes

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
― Immanuel Kant

“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.”
― Emmanuel Kant

“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.”
― Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.”
― Immanuel Kant

“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, Critique of Practical Reason

“Dare to think!”
― Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”
― immanuel kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”
― Immanuel Kant

“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”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

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

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
― Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

“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

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

“The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.”
― Immanuel Kant

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality.”
― 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, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.”
― Immanuel Kant

“If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!”
― Immanuel Kant

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
― 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

“We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild..”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?