Even if there never have been actions arising from such pure sources, what is at issue here is not whether this or that happened; that, instead, reason by itself and independently of all appearances commands what ought to happen; that, accordingly, actions of which the world has perhaps so far given no example, and whose very practicability might be very much doubted by one who bases everything on experience, are still inflexibly commanded by reason... because ... duty ... lies, prior to all experience, in the idea of a reason determing the will by means of apriori grounds.

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the worl…

Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims. An action that can coe…

I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience. I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.

If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of …