Immanuel Kant Quotes - Page 6

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

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

The business of philosophy is not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgments of common reason.

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.

Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.

Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind.

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.

Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.

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.

The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, 'War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.'

The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.

It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.

Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature.

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.

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!

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

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

Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?