Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

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

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."

"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."

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

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

"Ingratitude is the essence of vileness."

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

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

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

"Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination."

"It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy."

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

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

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

"It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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.'"

"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."

"What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?"

"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."

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

"Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason."