Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

“What Pascal overlooked was the hair-raising possibility that God might out-Luther Luther. A special area in hell might be reserved for those who go to mass. Or God might punish those whose faith is prompted by prudence. Perhaps God prefers the abstinent to those who whore around with some denomination he despises. Perhaps he reserves special rewards for those who deny themselves the comfort of belief. Perhaps the intellectual ascetic will win all while those who compromised their intellectual integrity lose everything.

There are many other possibilities. There might be many gods, including one who favors people like Pascal; but the other gods might overpower or outvote him, à la Homer. Nietzsche might well have applied to Pascal his cutting remark about Kant: when he wagered on God, the great mathematician 'became an idiot.”
― Walter Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy

“... Lithuanian nation must be saved, as it is the key to all the riddles - not only philology, but also in history - to solve the puzzle.”
― Immanuel Kant

“G.W.F. Hegel. "He's perfect," Weishaupt wrote.... "Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Leviathan

“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.”
― Max Müller, India: What Can It Teach Us

“As a matter of fact, no other language in the world has received such praise as the Lithuanian language. The garlands of high honour have been taken to Lithuanian people for inventing, elaborating, and introducing the most highly developed human speech with its beautiful and clear phonology. Moreover, according to comparative philology, the Lithuanian language is best qualified to represent the primitive Aryan civilization and culture".”
― Immanuel Kant

“„… lietuvių tauta privalo būti išsaugota, nes joje slypi raktas visoms mįslėms – ne tik filologijos, bet ir istorijos — įminti”.”
― Immanuel Kant

“What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?”
― Immanuel Kant

“Human reason is by nature architectonic."

Critique of Pure Reason”
― Kant

“O ser humano é aquilo que a educação faz dele.”
― Immanuel Kant

“The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and it consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence evokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality. Accordingly the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of the understanding , the sublime as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason, Hence, the delight is in the former case coupled with the representation of quality, but in this case with that of quantity. Moreover, the former delight is very different from the latter in kind. For the beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and thus is compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arrises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check of the vital forces followed all at once by discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no play, but a serious matter of the imagination. Hence charms are also incompatible with it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the object, but is also alternately repelled thereby, the delight in the sublime does not show how much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect, i.e. merits the name of a negative pleasure.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment

“Kant's greatest service to philosophy was to rid it of the bungling empiricism and of the empty, verbose transcendentalism of his predecessors, and thus to effect a complete revolution in philosophical thought.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is in these very items of knowledge which go beyond the world of senses, where experience can neither guide nor correct us, that reason carries out its investigations, which owing to their importance we consider to be far more excellent, and in their final aim far more sublime, than anything our understanding can learn in the field of appearances. Nay, we would rather dare anything, even at the risk of error, than surrender such investigations, either on ground of their precariousness or from any feeling of disdain or indifference. These unavoidable problems of pure reason itself are God, freedom, and immortality.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Zeker is dat op de dag dat Milena en Andrea mijn leven binnenwandelden, het formaat van het mannelijk geslachtsdeel een obsessie voor mij werd. Niet alleen het formaat, het geslachtsdeel zelf, het ding an sich.”
― Marek van der Jagt

“In seeing the thinkers in this tradition as embodying a certain fundamental viewpoint, I am far from denying that there is disagreement between them. Indeed, I try to show how Fichte’s concept of absolute freedom differs subtly from Kant’s, as well as how Fichte develops the theme of intersubjectivity in a new and creative direction. I also try to show how Kant and Herder differ concerning the correct way of understanding human nature, cultural difference and history; and also how Hegel’s theory of imputation differs from Kant’s, and deepens it. And, of course, I emphasize the radical difference between Marx’s treatment of themes having to do with right and the way these themes were treated by the thinkers earlier in the tradition.

At the same time, in treating the German philosophers of this period whose thought interests me, I always tend to emphasize continuities and agreements rather than squabbles and the differences. I think it is both shortsighted and wrongheaded to treat these thinkers as though the fundamental issue is whether we should choose Hegel over Kant, or defend Kant against Hegel, or even champion Marx over against the entire later German idealist tradition, trying to show that he has rendered the entire classical German philosophical tradition obsolete (a dogmatic sectarian attitude that is not as fashionable now as it once was). Instead, I think that despite the controversies within this tradition, there is something unified and important in it, when it comes to themes of freedom, right, ethics, humanity, community, and history, which sets the classical German tradition apart from other strands in modern philosophy.”
― Allen W. Wood, The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy

“What is most remarkable about the philosophy of Kant, in my opinion, is the wide range of topics on which his thoughts repay careful study. In so many areas -- not only in metaphysics but also in natural science, history, morality, and critique of taste -- he seems to have gone to the root of the matter, and at least raised for us the fundamental issues, whether or not we decide in the end that what he said about them is correct. In his brief, five-page essay on the question "What is Enlightenment?" for example, he locates the essence of enlightenment not in learning or the cultivation of our intellectual powers but in the courage and resolve to think for oneself, to emancipate oneself from tradition, prejudice, and every form of authority that offers us the comfort and security of letting someone else do our thinking for us. Kant's essay enables us to see that the issues raised by the challenge of the Enlightenment are still just as much with us as they were in the eighteenth century.”
― Allen W. Wood, Kant

“One of the most neglected areas in the philosophy of perception concerns animal senses. It is surprising how many philosophers write about perception in the apparent belief that humans are the only perceivers in the world. Human senses evolved through the natural process as other animal senses, so there is no reason to regard human senses as special, or better than other animal senses.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“One of the most neglected areas in the philosophy of perception concerns animal senses. It is surprising how many philosophers write about perception in the apparent belief that humans are the only perceivers in the world. Human senses evolved through the same natural process as other animal senses, so there is no reason to regard human senses as special, or better than other animal senses.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“One of the most neglected areas in the philosophy of perception concerns animal senses. It is surprising how many philosophers write abut perception in the apparent belief that humans are the only perceivers in the world. Human senses evolved through the same natural process as other animal senses, so there is no reason to regard human senses as special, or better than other animals senses.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“Our understanding of the universe is completely dependent upon the sensory apparatus available to us. Different animals have different sensory apparatus and so will have different but equally valid views of the universe. It is only by going outside our sensory apparatus, and studying how other sensory apparatus work, that we are able to get a better understanding of our own sensory apparatus.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“Each species has its own sensory world, which are often very different from each other's sensory world. There is some overlap between these worlds but there are many aspects of one species world which will be completely unknown to members of other species. The human view of the world is only one view and is no more valid than that of any other species.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“A significant part of the history of science has been the dethroning of human beings from being the centre of existence. Copernicus and Kepler showed the Earth was not the centre of the universe with everything orbiting the Earth. Darwin showed that the human being is just another animal, which has evolved like all other animals and shares ancestors with all other living species. It is time to dethrone the human view of the world and recognize that it is just another view of the world, no more real or true than the view of any other species.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“Our senses have evolved over millions of years in order to help us to survive. They give us information as to whether food is safe to eat, where potential prey may be and whether potential predators are around. They are designed to give us information relevant to our survival. Information not relevant to our survival, will not normally be available to us. Our senses are not designed to give us an accurate objective view of the world. They require a certain amount of energy to operate and human survival requires that energy is not wasted in providing us with information not relevant to our continued survival as a species. It is hardly surprising our senses do not give an accurate or objective view of the world. They are simply not intended for that purpose.”
― Rochelle Forrester, Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe

“Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in hell.”
― H.L. Mencken

“It is clearly the result, not of carelessness but of matured judgement of our age, which will no longer rest satisfied with the mere appearance of knowledge. It is, at the same time, a powerful appeal to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of its tasks, namely that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of appeal which should protect reason in its rightful claims, but dismiss all groundless pretensions, and to do this not by the means of despotic decrees but according to the eternal and unalterable laws of reason. This court of appeal is no other than the critique of pure reason itself.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason