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Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Immanuel Kant Quotes

“No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law ? i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself.”

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Book:Kant: Political Writings
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“Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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“Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.”

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Book:Practical Philosophy
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“In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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“[S]uppose the mind of [a] friend of humanity were clouded over with his own grief, extinguishing all sympathetic participation in the fate of others; he still has the resources to be beneficent to those suffering distress, but the distress of others does not touch him because he is sufficiently busy with his own; and now, where no inclination any longer stimulates him to it, he tears himself out of his deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination, solely from duty.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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“If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself.”

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Book:On Education
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“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.”

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Book:Ethical Philosophy: The Complete Texts of Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, Part II of The Metaphysics of Morals, with On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
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“Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.”

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Book:Philosophical writings
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“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.”

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Book:Kant's cosmogony as in his essay on the retardation of the rotation of the earth and his Natural history and theory of the heavens: With introduction, appendices, and a portrait of Thomas Wright of Durham
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