Immanuel Kant Quotes

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

The greatest evil that can oppress civilized peoples derives from wars, not, indeed, so much from actual present or past wars, as from the never-ending and constantly increasing arming for future war.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

The mind intent upon resolving as well as compounding the concept of a composite demands and presumes boundaries in which it may acquiesce in the former as well as in the latter direction.

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

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

The disease of the hypochondriac consists in this: that certain bodily sensations do not so much indicate a really existing disease in the body as rather merely excite apprehensions of its existence: and human nature is so constituted – a trait which the animal lacks – that it is able to strengthen or make permanent local impressions simply by paying attention to them, whereas an abstraction – whether produced on purpose or by other diverting occupations – lessen these impressions, or even effaces them altogether.

Duas coisas enchem o ânimo de admiração: o céu estrelado acima de mim, e a lei moral dentro de mim; ambas não estão fora do meu horizonte; antes, vejo-as perante mim e religo-as imediatamente com a consciência de minha existência. A primeira começa no lugar que eu ocupo no mundo e no exterior. A segunda começa no meu invisível eu, na minha personalidade e me coloca num mundo que tem a verdadeira infinidade; o que eleva infinitamente o meu valor como inteligência na qual a lei moral me revela uma vida independente da animalidade de todo mundo sensível.

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.

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge and an impatient eagerness to advance, also satisfaction at each progressive step. There was a time when I thought that all this could constitute the honor of humanity, and I despised the mob, which knows nothing about it. Rousseau set me straight. This dazzling excellence vanishes; I learn to honor men, and would consider myself much less useful than common laborers if I did not believe that this consideration could give all the others a value, to establish the rights of humanity.

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

Human reason goes forth inexorably to such questions as cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason or principles based on it.