Quotes from Immanuel Kant

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

In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of another. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Morality is not really the doctrine of how to make ourselves happy but of how we are to be worthy of happiness

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

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.

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

There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

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.'

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

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

Out of wood so crooked and perverse as that which man is made of, nothing absolutely straight can ever be wrought.

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

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

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

There is… only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

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.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

From timber so crooked as that from which man is carved, nothing entirely straight can be made.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.

That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no doubt....but although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does not all arise OUT OF experience.

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

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.

The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose.