Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 February 12, 1804), was a German philosopher and scientist (astrophysics, mathematics, geography, anthropology) from East Prussia. Kant is often considered one of the greatest and most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

18 Quotes

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general natural law

Immanuel Kant

Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the moral law within.

Immanuel Kant

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.

Immanuel Kant

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

Immanuel Kant

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

Immanuel Kant

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Immanuel Kant

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Immanuel Kant

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

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

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

Immanuel Kant

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

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

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

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

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

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

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.

Immanuel Kant

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

Immanuel Kant