Immanuel Kant Quotes

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.

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

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

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.

That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind...

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

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

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

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

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.

But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.

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

Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end

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