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Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes

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Famous Immanuel Kant Quotes

“Enthusiasm is always connected with the senses, whatever be the object that excites it. The true strength of virtue is serenity of mind, combined with a deliberate and steadfast determination to execute her laws. That is the healthful condition of the moral life; on the other hand, enthusiasm, even when excited by representations of goodness, is a brilliant but feverish glow which leaves only exhaustion and languor behind.”

MindHandsLawBehindsMoralVirtueConditionsObjectsGoodnessDeterminationExcitedConnectedBrilliantSensesEnthusiasmSerenityRepresentationDeliberateExhaustionSteadfastTrue StrengthMoral Life
Author:Immanuel Kant
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“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”

IfsMindTwoLawHeavenExistenceConsciousnessMoralVisionTwo ThingsAweAdmirationHorizonObscurityExtravaganceMoral LawConjectureBeyond The Horizon
Author:Immanuel Kant
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“Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).”

KnowsMindFirstsTwoScienceKnowledgeKnowingObjectsSourceSpringConceptsCapacityFundamentalsProductionsImpressionReceivingRepresentationSpontaneityReceptivity
Book:Immanuel Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason
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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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“This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.”

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Book:Critique of pure reason, tr. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn
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“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know!”

IfsKnowsMenMindSelfUseLyingCausesUnderstandingCourageEnlightenmentDareGuidanceInabilityEmergenceIndecisionLack Of Understanding
Author:Immanuel Kant
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“To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.”

MindKindMaySelfDoneActionJoyInterestWorkPleasureLevelsMoralCasesDutySatisfactionDelightVanityMotiveNeverthelessMaximsInclinationSelf InterestImportsAmiable
Book:Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
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