Famous Immanuel Kant Quotes On The Categorical Imperative And Ethics

The only thing permanent is change.

You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am

Reason can never prove the existence of God.

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Always regard every man as an end in himself, and never use him merely as a means to your ends [i.e., respect that each person has a life and purpose that is their own; do not treat people as objects to be exploited].

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

Have the courage to use your own reason- that is the motto of enlightenment.
“foundations of the metaphysics of
morals” (1785).

If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes

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

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.

We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any

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

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Dare to know! have the courage to use your own intelligence!.

Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him to leave ease… and throw himself into roils and labors.

Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.

Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth.

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

Look closely. The beautiful may be small.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter.

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

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

Nature even in chaos cannot proceed otherwise than regularly and according to order.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

Thinking in pictures precedes thinking in words.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

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

Dare to think!.

Maximum individuality within maximum community

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

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

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

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

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.

Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings

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.

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

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

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.

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.

Melancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.

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

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

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).

Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.

Great minds think for themselves.

Do the right thing because it is right.

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.

Maturity is having the courage to use one’s own intelligence!

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

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.

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.

Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one’s means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.

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.

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

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

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

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.

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.

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

How then is perfection to be sought? wherein lies our hope? in education, and in nothing else.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.

Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future.

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

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

For peace to reign on earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.