110+ Immanuel Kant Quotes On Ethics, God And Education

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from the late 18th century. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in modern philosophy and is known for his works on metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics. His most famous works include Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Immanuel Kant on love, ethics, god.

Top 10 Immanuel Kant Quotes

1. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
2. Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.
3. Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.
4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
5. All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
6. Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes
7. Do the right thing because it is right.
8. Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
9. A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.
10. There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Immanuel Kant Image Quotes

Do the right thing because it is right. — Immanuel Kant

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. — Immanuel Kant

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant

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

The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never. — Immanuel Kant

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Short Quotes

• Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
• We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.
• Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
• The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.
• THERE ARE TWO THINGS that don't have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter.
• Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
• Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.
• I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge.
• Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
• Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Love

The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young. — Immanuel Kant

***Three Conditions of Happiness*** If you have work to do If you have someone you love If You have hope Then You are Happy now! — Immanuel Kant

Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized comes, at length, really to love him to whom he has done good. — Immanuel Kant

Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Ethics

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

The death of dogma is the birth of morality. — Immanuel Kant

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will. — Immanuel Kant

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

Immanuel Kant Quotes About God

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

God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system. — Immanuel Kant

There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise. — Immanuel Kant

Reason can never prove the existence of God. — Immanuel Kant

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

The ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause. — Immanuel Kant

The sum total of all possible knowledge of God is not possible for a human being, not even through a true revelation. But it is one of the worthiest inquiries to see how far our reason can go in the knowledge of God. — Immanuel Kant

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable. — Immanuel Kant

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly. — Immanuel Kant

God, freedom, and immortality are untenable in the light of pure reason. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Education

Great minds think for themselves. — Immanuel Kant

It is through good education that all the good in the world arises. — Immanuel Kant

Parents usually educate their children merely in such a manner than however bad the world may be, they may adapt themselves to its present conditions. But they ought to give them an education so much better than this, that a better condition of things may thereby be brought about by the future. — Immanuel Kant

If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment. — Immanuel Kant

In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics the various nonmoral feelings are to be made use of; in the elements of moral metaphysics the various moral feelings of men, according to the differences in sex, age, education, and government, of races and climates, are to be employed. — Immanuel Kant

How then is perfection to be sought? Wherein lies our hope? In education, and in nothing else. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Happiness

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. — Immanuel Kant

The ultimate destiny of the human race is the greatest moral perfection, provided that it is achieved through human freedom, whereby alone man is capable of the greatest happiness. — Immanuel Kant

When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward. — Immanuel Kant

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others. — Immanuel Kant

We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment. — Immanuel Kant

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason. — 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

Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings — Immanuel Kant

Act in such a way that you will be worthy of being happy. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Enlightenment

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! — Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. — Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity...No thing 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

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows. — Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority... Supere aude! Dare to use your own understanding!is thus the motto of the Enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant

Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785) — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Human Nature

Human reason is by nature architectonic. — Immanuel Kant

The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally. — Immanuel Kant

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. — Immanuel Kant

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility — Immanuel Kant

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason. — Immanuel Kant

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

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

A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Morality

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant

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

To a high degree we are, through art and science, cultured. We are civilized - perhaps too much for our own good - in all sorts of social grace and decorum. But to consider ourselves as having reached morality - for that, much is lacking. — Immanuel Kant

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray — Immanuel Kant

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept. — Immanuel Kant

Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on: the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me. — Immanuel Kant

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty. — Immanuel Kant

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

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose. — 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

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Reasoning

Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth. — Immanuel Kant

It is never too late to become reasonable and wise. — Immanuel Kant

There is nothing higher than reason. — Immanuel Kant

The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience — Immanuel Kant

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason. — Immanuel Kant

Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience. — 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

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts ; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts. — Immanuel Kant

All our knowledge begins with the senses... — Immanuel Kant

That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Metaphysics

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

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end. - 'Metaphysical Principles of Virtue — Immanuel Kant

Upon the solution of this problem, or upon sufficient proof of the impossibility of synthetical knowledge a priori, depends the existence or downfall of metaphysics. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Reason

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason. — Immanuel Kant

Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason. — 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

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual. — Immanuel Kant

Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs. — Immanuel Kant

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

Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole? — Immanuel Kant

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

The business of philosophy is not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgments of common reason. — Immanuel Kant

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About Made

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. — Immanuel Kant

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made. — Immanuel Kant

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law. — Immanuel Kant

Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infinitely worse than non-existence? — Immanuel Kant

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

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

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

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes About World

Ghost stories are always listened to and well received in private, but pitilessly disavowed in public. For my own part, ignorant as I am of the way in which the human spirit enters the world and the way in which he goes out of it, I dare not deny the truth of many such narratives. — Immanuel Kant

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

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

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

At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world. — Immanuel Kant

Do what is right, though the world may perish. — Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Famous Quotes And Sayings

Do the right thing because it is right. — Immanuel Kant

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. — Immanuel Kant

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty. — Immanuel Kant

I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and nurtured the first seeds of good within me. She opened my heart to the lasting impressions of nature; she awakened my understanding and extended my horizon and her percepts exerted an everlasting influence upon the course of my life. — Immanuel Kant

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant

Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality. — 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

The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never. — Immanuel Kant

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

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose. — Immanuel Kant

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. — 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

If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death. — Immanuel Kant

The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity. — Immanuel Kant

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. — 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

It is presumed that there exists a great unity in nature, in respect of the adequacy of a single cause to account for many different kinds of consequences. — Immanuel Kant

Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, 'War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.' — Immanuel Kant

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on. — Immanuel Kant

All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas. — Immanuel Kant

A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral. — Immanuel Kant

By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man. — Immanuel Kant

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. — Immanuel Kant

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person. — Immanuel Kant

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt — Immanuel Kant

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity. — Immanuel Kant

It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect. — Immanuel Kant

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life. — Immanuel Kant

Maturity is having the courage to use one's own intelligence! — Immanuel Kant

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness. — Immanuel Kant

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

Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but it imposes its laws upon nature. — Immanuel Kant

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild. — Immanuel Kant

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion. — Immanuel Kant

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him. — Immanuel Kant

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience. — Immanuel Kant

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

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee. — Immanuel Kant

Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt. — Immanuel Kant

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor! — Immanuel Kant

If I am to constrain you by any law, it must be one by which I am also bound. — Immanuel Kant

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori. — Immanuel Kant

The existence of the Bible is the greatest blessing which humanity ever experienced. — Immanuel Kant

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end. — Immanuel Kant

The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding. — Immanuel Kant

A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body. — Immanuel Kant

Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself. — Immanuel Kant

Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation. — Immanuel Kant

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. — Immanuel Kant

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form. — Immanuel Kant

Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed. — Immanuel Kant

Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard. — Immanuel Kant

Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful. — Immanuel Kant

The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does. — Immanuel Kant

The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away. — Immanuel Kant

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. — Immanuel Kant

It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless. — Immanuel Kant

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself. — Immanuel Kant

By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself. — Immanuel Kant

Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained. — Immanuel Kant

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy) Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism) Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism) Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic) — Immanuel Kant

It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err — not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all. — Immanuel Kant

Life Lessons by Immanuel Kant

1. Immanuel Kant believed in the importance of using reason and logic to make decisions and strive for moral perfection. He also believed that one should always act with respect for the autonomy of others.
2. Kant's philosophy of universal morality emphasizes the importance of treating others with respect, and of recognizing the inherent value of all human beings.
3. Kant's moral philosophy emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions and of striving to act with integrity and justice in all aspects of life.