Immanuel Kant

Look closely.

The beautiful may be small.

—Immanuel Kant

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

—Immanuel Kant

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

—Immanuel Kant

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

—Immanuel Kant

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

—Immanuel Kant

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

—Immanuel Kant

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ’War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.’

—Immanuel Kant

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

—Immanuel Kant

War seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives.

—Immanuel Kant

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.

—Immanuel Kant

There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

—Immanuel Kant

For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.

—Immanuel Kant

Dare to think!

—Immanuel Kant

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

—Immanuel Kant

How then is perfection to be sought?

Wherein lies our hope? In education, and in nothing else.

—Immanuel Kant

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

—Immanuel Kant

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

—Immanuel Kant

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

—Immanuel Kant

All human cognition begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to conceptions, and ends with ideas.

—Immanuel Kant

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

—Immanuel Kant

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

—Immanuel Kant

Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.

—Immanuel Kant

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

—Immanuel Kant

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

—Immanuel Kant

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

—Immanuel Kant

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

—Immanuel Kant

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.

—Immanuel Kant

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

—Immanuel Kant

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world … is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

—Immanuel Kant

If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on… then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.

—Immanuel Kant