Immanuel Kant Quotes

I have myself given this my theory the name of transcendental idealism, but that cannot authorize any one to confound it either with the empirical idealism of Descartes, (indeed, his was only an insoluble problem, owing to which he thought every one at liberty to deny the existence of the corporeal world, because it could never be proved satisfactorily), or with the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley, against which and other similar phantasms our Critique contains the proper antidote. My idealism concerns not the existence of things (the doubting of which, however, constitutes idealism in the ordinary sense), since it never came into my head to doubt it, but it concerns the sensuous representation of things, to which space and time especially belong.

For morality, with regard to its principles of public right (hence in relation to a political code which can be known a priori), has the peculiar feature that the less it makes its conduct depend upon the end it envisages (whether this be a physical or moral advantage), the more it will in general harmonise with this end.

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.

B626
Sein ist offenbar kein reales Prädikat, d.i. ein Begriff von irgend etwas, was zu dem Begriffe eines Dinges, oder gewisser Bestimmungen an sich selbst...

B627
Und so enthält das Wirkliche nichts mehr, als das bloss Mögliche. Hundert wirkliche Thaler enthalten nicht das mindeste mehr, als hundert mögliche...

Aber in meinem Vermögenszustande ist
mehr bei hundert wirklichen Thalern, als bei dem blossen Begriffe derselben, ( d.i. ihrer Moeglichkeit ).

Nothing happens by blind chance.

Science can be divided into an infinite number of disciplines, and the amount of knowledge that can be pursued in each discipline is limitless. The most critical piece of knowledge, then, is the knowledge of what is essential to learn and what isn’t.

A huge amount of knowledge is accumulated at present. Soon our abilities will be too weak, and our lives too short, to study this knowledge. We have vast treasures of knowledge at our disposal but after we study them, we often do not use them at all. It would be better not to have this burden, this unnecessary knowledge, which we do not really need.

...но и в том, что должно быть творением прекрасного искусства, часто обнаруживается гений, лишенный вкуса, или вкус, лишенный гения.

Das Lachen ist der Gesundheit zuträglich, denn es fördert die Verdauung.

Second among the crimina carnis contra naturam is intercourse sexus homogenii/ where the object of sexual inclination continues, indeed, to be human, but is changed since the sexual congress is not heterogeneous but homogeneous, i.e., when a woman satisfies her impulse on a woman, or a man on a man.

...whose true object is to shed the clearest light on every step which reason takes.

If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.

Nobody can claim himself to be practically proficient in a science and yet disdain its theory without revealing himself to be an ignoramus in his area.

A learned woman might just as well have a beard, for that expresses in a more recognizable form the profundity for which she strives.

...красота – это не свойство объекта, а мое отношение к объекту.

A man shouldn’t claim to know even himself as he really is by knowing himself through inner sensation — i.e. by introspection. For since he doesn’t produce himself (so to speak) or get his concept of himself a priori but only empirically, it is natural that he gets his knowledge of himself through inner sense and consequently only through how his nature appears and how his consciousness is affected. But beyond the character of his own subject, which is made up out of these mere appearances, he necessarily assumes something else underlying it, namely his I as it is in itself. Thus in respect to mere perception and receptivity to sensations he must count himself as belonging to the sensible world; but in respect to whatever pure activity there may be in himself (which reaches his consciousness directly and not by affecting the inner or outer senses) he must count himself as belonging to the intellectual world — though he doesn’t know anything more about it.