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Immanuel Kant Quotes

1724–1804 Germany

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), born Emanuel Kant, was a German philosopher.

Germany
Academics
Anthropologists
Logicians
Non-fiction authors

Also known as: Kant, Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason

Random Immanuel Kant quote

134 quotes

This problem is the most difficult and the last to be solved by mankind.

Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

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.

The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant (1904)

The humiliating difference between laymen and clergymen must disappear, and equality spring from true liberty.

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

Gems of Thought (1888)

The friction among men, the inevitable antagonism, which is a mark of even the largest societies and political bodies, is used by Nature as a means to establish a condition of quiet and security.

Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

For it is extremely absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must incline.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.

Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

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.

Doctrine of Virtue as translated by Mary J. Gregor (1964)

A will whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of autonomy is a holy, absolutely good will.

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

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

I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

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

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Religion is based on faith alone, and faith stands in no need of logical demonstrations, but is itself justified in postulating its content as a necessary hypothesis.

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.

Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.

What is Enlightenment? (1784)

I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Systems seem, like certain worms, to be formed by a kind of generatio aequivoca--by the mere confluence of conceptions, and to gain completeness only with the progress of time.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Immanuel Kant (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.