Kent was a German Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment period, having a major impact on the Romantic and Idealist philosophies of the 19th Century, and as one of history’s most influential thinkers. Most famous are his ideas on transcendental idealism that we bring innate forms and concepts to the raw experience of the unknowable world, Known as a solitary man, he was considered a very sociable person who regularly had guests over for dinner, insisting that sociable company was good for his constitution, as was laughter.
Kant was a respected and competent university professor for most of his life, Kant’s philosophy of nature and human nature was both immediately controversial and very durable in its influence.
(1724-1804)
– Immanuel Kant Quotes –
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
~ Immanuel Kant
To be is to do.
~ Immanuel Kant
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.’
~ Immanuel Kant
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.
~ Immanuel Kant
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.
~ Immanuel Kant
Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.
~ Immanuel Kant
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.
~ Immanuel Kant
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
~ Immanuel Kant
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
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
~ Immanuel Kant
By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.
~ Immanuel Kant
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?
~ Immanuel Kant
Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.
~ Immanuel Kant
May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
~ Immanuel Kant
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
~ Immanuel Kant
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
~ Immanuel Kant
A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.
~ Immanuel Kant
But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.
~ Immanuel Kant
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
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
~ Immanuel Kant
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
~ Immanuel Kant
Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
~ Immanuel Kant
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
~ Immanuel Kant
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
~ Immanuel Kant
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
~ Immanuel Kant
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.
~ Immanuel Kant
It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
~ Immanuel Kant
It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience.
~ Immanuel Kant
Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
~ Immanuel Kant
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
~ Immanuel Kant
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.
~ Immanuel Kant
What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?
~ Immanuel Kant
I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.
~ Immanuel Kant
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.
~ Immanuel Kant
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
~ Immanuel Kant
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
~ Immanuel Kant
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.
~ Immanuel Kant
