Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who lived during the Enlightenment era of the late 18th century. His best-known work is the “Critique of Practical Reason.”
Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Konigsberg, Prussia or what is now Kaliningrad, Russia. While teaching he published science papers, including “A General History of Nature and Theory of Heaven ” in 1755. He spent the next 15 years as a professor of metaphysics.
In 1781, he published the first part of the book “Critique of Practical Reason”. He published more reviews in the years before his death on February 12, 1804 in the city of his birth.
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50 Immanuel Kant phrases on ethics, freedom and art
Here I leave you a compilation of the most famous Immanuel Kant phrases .
Here are the quotes from Immanuel Kant:
1. “Seek not the favor of the crowd which is seldom attained by honest and legal means. Seek the endorsement of a few; do not take into account the number of voices, but their weight.”
2. “A man is guilty before the law when he violates the rights of another, in ethics he is guilty just for thinking of doing it.”
3. “Man must be disciplined, since he is by nature crude and wild.”
4. “For a lie, a man annihilates his human dignity.”
5. “It is not God’s will merely that we be happy, but that we make ourselves happy.”
6. “Sublime qualities command respect; the beautiful love.”
7. “Act in such a way that from your principle of action a safe law can be made for the whole world.”
8. “Morality is not the doctrine of how we might make ourselves happy, but how we might make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
9. “Conscience is an instinct that leads us to judge ourselves in light of moral laws.”
10. “All the interests of my reason, speculative and practical, are combined in the following three questions: What can I know? What should I do? What can I expect?
11. “Democracy necessarily constitutes a despotism, since it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will. Since it is possible for everyone to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all, which is contradictory and opposed to freedom.”
12. “Live your life as if the maximum of your actions were to become universal law.”
13. “With the stones that the critics throw at you with hard intent, you can well erect a monument.”
14. “Man is jealous if he loves; the woman also, although she does not love.
15. “Our era is the era of criticism, to which everything must submit. Religion for its sanctity and legislation for its majesty usually try to avoid it. But then they arouse a justified suspicion against them and cannot demand sincere respect, conferred by reason only on what has been able to pass their free and public examination.”
16. “Enlightenment is the emergence of man from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s intellect without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not a lack of understanding but a lack of resolution and courage to use it without the other’s guidance. The motto of the illustration is therefore: “Sapere aude” Dare to think for yourself!”
17. “All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from there to concepts, and ends with ideas.”
18. “An organized product of nature is one in which all the parts are mutually ends and means.”
19. “Give me matter and I will build you a world.”
20. “Where the human being comes from we all know, where he wants to go few know.”
21. “I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke up and realized that it is duty.”
22. “Marriage is the union of two people of different sex with a vision of mutual possession of the sexual attributes of the other for the duration of their lives.”
23. “The notion without intuition is empty, the intuition without notion is blind.”
24. “Our knowledge arises from two fundamental sources of the mind, of which the first is that of receiving representations (the receptivity of impressions), and the second, the faculty of knowing an object through those representations (the spontaneity of the concepts).”
25. “An action, to have moral value, must have been done from duty.”
26. “There is something splendid about innocence, but what is bad about it, instead, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.”
27. “Two things fill the mind with admiration and respect, always new and growing the more repeatedly and persistently reflection deals with them: the starry sky that is above me and the moral law that is in me.”
28. “One generation cannot bind itself and order the next to be put in such a condition that it cannot extend (at most very occasionally) its knowledge, purify itself of errors and progress in general enlightenment.”
29. “The new prejudices will serve just like the old ones to imprison the great non-thinking masses.”
30. “We are not rich because of what we have, but rather because of what we can do without.”
31. “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of others, never only as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”
32. “Dare to think!”
33. “Look closely. The beautiful could be small.”
34. “We see things, not as they are, but as we are.”
35. “The busier we are, the more acutely we feel what we live, we are more aware of life.”
36. “Laziness and cowardice are the causes thanks to which so many men gladly continue to be minors throughout their lives, despite the fact that nature has freed them long ago from alien conduct (making them physically adults); and that is why it has been so easy for others to set themselves up as their tutors.”
37. “Only through education can man become a man. Man is nothing more than what education makes of him.”
38. “Be patient for a while; calumnies don’t last long. Truth is the child of time; all the time she will appear to vindicate me.”
39. “For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see everything first.”
40. “Patience is the strength of the weak and impatience the weakness of the strong.”
41. “Genius is the ability to independently reach out and understand concepts that normally have to be taught by someone else.”
42. “Space and time are the framework within which the mind is pressed to build its experience of reality.”
43. “Freedom is that faculty that increases the usefulness of the other faculties.”
44. “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of the imagination.”
45. “I had to remove knowledge to make room for belief.”
46. “Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.”
47. “The wise man can change his mind. The fool, never.”
48. “Simply acquiescing to skepticism can never be enough to overcome the disquiet of reason.”
49. “As the earthly path is strewn with thorns, God has given man three gifts: smile, dream and hope.”
50. “Just as a face is beautiful because it reveals the soul, so the world is beautiful because a God is seen through it.”
51. “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
52. “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is a simple intellectual game.”
53. “Have courage to use your own reason. That is the motto of enlightenment.”
54. “With a wood as crooked as that from which man is made, nothing can be carved completely straight.”
55. “We are not millionaires because of what we have, but because of what we can do without having any material resources.”
What other Immanuel Kant phrases would you add to the list? Which Immanuel Kant phrases were your favorites?