Top 100 Kant's Quotes
#1. When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume.
Joseph B.H. McMillan
#2. Go ahead; take Kant's PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSIC and get it to show what he is telling. We would all be a lot happier.
Natalie Goldberg
#3. The former morality, namely Kant's, demanded of the individual actions which one desired of all men: that was a very naive thing;
Friedrich Nietzsche
#4. Kant's philosophy states that it is inherent in us. He agreed with Hume that we cannot know with certainty what the world is like "in itself." We can only know the what the world is like "for me" of for everybody.
Jostein Gaarder
#5. According to Kant's late work on the Principles of Politics (1793), the irreducible problem of the human species is the following: the human being is an animal and thus, to live peacefully with other animals of its kind, absolutely needs a master.
Gregg Lambert
#6. Immanuel Kant's "categorical imperative" says that individual actions are to be judged according to whether we would be pleased if everyone in society took the same action.
Tom Butler-Bowdon
#7. Always in England if you had the type of brain that was capable of understanding T.S. Eliot's poetry or Kant's logic, you could be sure of finding large numbers of people who would hate you violently.
D.J. Taylor
#8. I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kant's idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, it's an evolved machine that we carry with us.
Bernard Beckett
#9. My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#10. Historically the most striking result of Kant's labors was the rapid separation of the thinkers of his own nation and, though less completely, of the world, into two parties;-the philosophers and the scientists.
Lawrence Joseph Henderson
#11. Western philosophy, then, is not an extended debate about knowledge, ethics, and reality, but a succession of conceptual metaphors. Descartes's philosophy is based on KNOWING IS SEEING, Locke's on the MIND IS A CONTAINER, Kant's on MORALITY IS A STRICT FATHER, and so on.
Steven Pinker
#12. Kant's style is so heavy that after his pure reason, the reader longs for unreasonableness.
Alfred Nobel
#13. Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
Roger Scruton
#14. I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#15. This part of Kant's view is, I believe, a profound truth. We can be morally responsible in several other ways, or senses, but no one could ever be responsible, I believe, in any way that could make them deserve to suffer. Nor, I believe, does anyone deserve to be less happy.
Derek Parfit
#16. I'm on the cross. be kind and they put you on the cross. that son of a bitch on his couch talking about Mahler and Kant and cunt and revolution, not really knowing about any of them.
Charles Bukowski
#17. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a general law of nature.
Immanuel Kant
#18. He pulled me to his chest, and when he kissed me, gravity ceased to exist. The sensation was like floating on air as the world erupted into chaos around us. But he was my anchor, pulling me back to earth - he was my home.
Komal Kant
#19. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#20. Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale.
Immanuel Kant
#21. Men will not understand ... that when they fulfil their duties to men, they fulfil thereby God's commandments; that they are consequently always in the service of God, as long as their
actions are moral, and that it is absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise.
Immanuel Kant
#22. Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.
Immanuel Kant
#23. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#24. [Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
Bertrand Russell
#25. Every human being should always be treated as an end and never as a mere instrument.
Immanuel Kant
#26. Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.
Immanuel Kant
#27. From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
Immanuel Kant
#29. No buts, no excuses. Live life to your expectations, not anyone else's.
Komal Kant
#30. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#31. [To] interpret Parmenides as a Kant before Kant ... this is exactly what we must do.
Karl Popper
#34. From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn.
Immanuel Kant
#35. Immanuel Kant would've made a lousy lawyer, but a great judge!
Stephen Gillers
#36. Kant, as we all know, compared moral law to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. On the naturalistic hypothesis we should rather compare it to the protective blotches on a beetle's back, and find them both ingenious.
Arthur Balfour
#37. It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
Immanuel Kant
#38. The main point of enlightenment is man's release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.
Immanuel Kant
#39. One of the principal motifs of Nietzsche's work is that Kant had not carried out a true critique because he was not able to pose the problem of critique in terms of values.
Gilles Deleuze
#40. Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. ... 1 Nothing is required for this enlightenment ... except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. - IMMANUEL KANT, What Is Enlightenment?
Jon Meacham
#41. Immanuel Kant is credited with saying, "If the stars came out only once in a lifetime, we'd stay up all that night." Now we stay up late in Plato's cave just to watch the enervated stars on The Tonight Show.
William J. O'Malley
#42. [A} maxim's legal character must be intrinsic: it must have what I shall call 'lawlike form.' this is why legal character, or universality, must be understood as lawlike form, that is, as a requirement of universalizability.
Christine M. Korsgaard
#43. Cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.
Immanuel Kant
#44. Man's duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.
Immanuel Kant
#45. Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist. That's the morality you need to govern a society of autonomous individuals.
Jonathan Haidt
#46. A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral.
Immanuel Kant
#47. Maturity is having the courage to use one's own intelligence!
Immanuel Kant
#48. It's exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy - about Shakespeare and Milton; Newton and Einstein and Freud; about Plato and Hegel and Kant, and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind.
Daniel Keyes
#49. G.W.F. Hegel. "He's perfect," Weishaupt wrote ... "Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language.
Robert Anton Wilson
#50. Riches ennoble a man's circumstances, but not himself.
Immanuel Kant
#51. It's fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever did.
James Gleick
#52. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.
Immanuel Kant
#53. The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing 'evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad headache after it was all over.
Louisa May Alcott
#54. You are not going to walk away from me. You are not going to leave me. I know I'm messed up. I know I will never be what you deserve but, damnit, I'm sure as hell going to try every single day. I'm going to try my hardest, Estella, because without you, there's nothing.
Komal Kant
#55. Enlightenment is man's exodus from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the inability to use one's understanding without the guidance of another person..'Dare to Know'(sapere aude) Have the courage to use your own understanding;this is the motto of the Enlightenment.
Immanuel Kant
#56. Kant is the most evil man in mankind's history.
Ayn Rand
#57. You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.
Richard Rorty
#58. The Copernican revolution brought about by Kant was, I think, the most important single turning point in the history of philosophy.
Bryan Magee
#59. Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.
Immanuel Kant
#60. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#61. In his essay, 'Perpetual Peace,' the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
Henry Kissinger
#62. All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.
Immanuel Kant
#63. Man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end.
Immanuel Kant
#64. Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
Immanuel Kant
#65. A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.
Immanuel Kant
#66. What reason would I have to look at other girls when I have you? You're everything I need.
Komal Kant
#67. If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.
Immanuel Kant
#68. Hadie: At first you didn't tell me because you didn't know me well enough. And then you couldn't tell me because you knew me too well.
Komal Kant
#69. In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.
Immanuel Kant
#70. Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.
Immanuel Kant
#72. Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated.
Immanuel Kant
#73. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!
Immanuel Kant
#74. The instruction of children should aim gradually to combine knowing and doing. Among all sciences mathematics seems to be the only one of a kind to satisfy this aim most completely.
Immanuel Kant
#75. It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.
Immanuel Kant
#76. Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.
Susan Sontag
#77. There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.
Immanuel Kant
#78. It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to every one.
Immanuel Kant
#79. If we could see ourselves ... as we really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community which neither began at birth nor will end with the death of the body.
Immanuel Kant
#80. Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything
Immanuel Kant
#81. If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.
Immanuel Kant
#82. The infinitude of creation is great enough to make a world, or a Milky Way of worlds, look in comparison with it what a flower or an insect does in comparison with the Earth.
Immanuel Kant
#83. The doctrine of morals is an autonomy of practical reason, while the doctrine of virtue is at the same time an autocracy of practical reason.
Immanuel Kant
#84. It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#85. Philosophical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from concepts; mathematical knowledge is knowledge which reason gains from the construction of concepts.
Immanuel Kant
#86. I'm no syllogism incarnate, but my wife makes me look like Immanuel Kant.
Claudia Cardinale
#87. The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.
Immanuel Kant
#88. Human reason goes forth inexorably to such questions as cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason or principles based on it.
Immanuel Kant
#89. But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.
Immanuel Kant
#90. Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.
Immanuel Kant
#91. Plato and Aristotle are my teachers. Even Kant is my teacher, but my greatest teacher is my failures.
Debasish Mridha
#92. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#93. Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.
Immanuel Kant
#94. All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law.
Immanuel Kant
#95. Marriage ... is the union of two people of different sexes with a view to the mutual possession of each other's sexual attributes for the duration of their lives.
Immanuel Kant
#96. 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.
Immanuel Kant
#97. Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
Immanuel Kant
#98. Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
Immanuel Kant
#99. But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.
Immanuel Kant
#100. Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
W. Somerset Maugham
