Immanuel Kant quotes
Königsberg philosopher who reframed Western thought. His critical philosophy asks: what can I know, what ought I do, what may I hope?
25 passages across 14 themes. More on Immanuel Kant.
On character
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”
“The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.”
“The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.”
On mind
“The mind intent upon resolving as well as compounding the concept of a composite demands and presumes boundaries in which it may acquiesce in the former as well as in the latter direction.”
“Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.”
“In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.”
“Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?”
On ethics
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
“Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”
On time
“Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.”
“A spurious axiom of the first class is: Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime.”
On wholeness
“As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.”
“All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.”
On action
“The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.”
“A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.”
On presence
“The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.”
“A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.”
On wonder
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
On wisdom
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
On truth
“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. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.”
On meaning
“Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.”
On freedom
“Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person’s freedom.”
On death
“The death of dogma is the birth of morality.”
On kindness
“This problem is the most difficult and the last to be solved by mankind.”