Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher. His Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Critique of Judgment (1790) offer an analysis of speculative and moral reason and the faculty of human judgment. He exerted an immense influence on the intellectual movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. European philosophy is generally divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought.

Born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to Lutheran parents, Kant studied theology, physics, mathematics, and philosophy at university. He lectured at the University of Königsberg for 15 years until he was eventually given a tenured position as professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770.

In his most influential work, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued against Empiricism (the mind was a blank slate to be filled with observations of the physical world) and against Rationalism (it was possible to experience the world objectively without the interference of the mind.) He synthesized those two schools of philosophy—he asserted that the conscious mind must process and organize our perceptions, and made a distinction between the natural worlds as we observe it and the natural world as it is.

In The Critique of Practical Reason, Kant affirmed the existence of absolute moral law, the categorical imperative of morality dictated by actions based on rightness. Kant viewed morality as something that arises from human reason; he maintained that an action’s goodness is determined not by the outcome of the action, but by the motive behind it.

Kant also wrote several essays in support of religious liberalism and the Enlightenment.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Immanuel Kant

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always also as an end.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Humanity, Humankind

There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God, and freewill, and immortality arise.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Faith

There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Ethics

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Discipline

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Man, Mankind

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Experience

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Reason

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Criticism, Critics

Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Riches

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Hope

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Suicide

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Living, Doing Your Best, Action

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Sincerity

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
—Immanuel Kant

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.
—Immanuel Kant

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Intuition

An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Goodness

What are the aims which are at the same time duties?—they are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.
—Immanuel Kant

The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Change

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Arguments

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honorably.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness

By a lie, a man…annihilates his dignity as a man.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Lies, Lying, Deception/Lying

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

It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness

The greatest human quest is to know
what one must do in order to become a human being.
—Immanuel Kant

Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one’s means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Economy

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Humanity

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