Immanuel Kant Quotes - Page 3

Man's duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.

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.

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.

Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.

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.

It is through good education that all the good in the world arises.

Act in such a way that you will be worthy of being happy.

There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.

The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth

Honesty is better than any policy.

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.

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.

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

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

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.

I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.

Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.

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

Two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heavens, and the sense of right and wrong in man.

Thinking in pictures precedes thinking in words.

Reason can never prove the existence of God.

If we knew that god exists, such knowledge would make morality impossible. For, if we acted morally from fear or fright, or confident of a reward, then this would not be moral. It would be enlightened selfishness.

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