Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

Everything in nature acts in conformity with law.

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

Riches ennoble a man's circumstances, but not himself.

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.

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

The ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause.

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.

No state at war with another state should engage in hostilities of such a kind as to render mutual confidence impossible when peace will have been 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.

In the mere concept of one thing it cannot be found any character of its existence.

All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.

The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.

[Aristotle formal logic thus far (1787)] has not been able to advance a single step, and hence is to all appearances closed and completed.

Upon the solution of this problem, or upon sufficient proof of the impossibility of synthetical knowledge a priori, depends the existence or downfall of metaphysics.

Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason.

Act so as to use humanity, yourself and others, always as an end and never as a means to an end.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

El sabio puede cambiar de opinión. El necio, nunca.

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

Philosophical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from concepts mathematical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from the construction of concepts.

...[H]uman reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way.

Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end

...[P]hysics... [is] the philosophy of nature, so far as it is based on empirical laws.

...[F]reedom... is a property of all rational beings.

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgement of reason, and perverts its liberty.

From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn.

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

Woman wants control, man self-control .

But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.

The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.

...[T]o be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may often be very advantageous to me, although to abide by it is certainly safer.

...I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings.

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? (Critique of Pure Reason

The main point of enlightenment is man's release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.