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Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Immanuel Kant Quotes

“Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastical, high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a complement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus for the realization of perpetual peace.”

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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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“The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.”

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Book:Critique of pure reason
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“...as soon as we examine suicide from the standpoint of religion we immediately see it in its true light. We have been placed in this world under certain conditions and for specific purposes. But a suicide opposes the purpose of his creator; he arrives in the other world as one who has deserted his post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God. God is our owner; we are his property; his providence works for our good.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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“God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system.”

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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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“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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“Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!”

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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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“One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there; but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides itself so much on its advantages.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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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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