17 Immanuel Kant Quotes on Philosophy

Immanuel Kant quotes on philosophy

5. I freely admit: it was David Hume's remark that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my enquiries in the field of speculative philosophy.

6. Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

16. 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 world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

19. Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. (Preface, A vii)

21. Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public. (Preface to 2nd edition, B xxxiv)

24. Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (B 75)

25. A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature-probably also the disposition of the whole universe-give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind-just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that, notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually, unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the universe is alone fully adequate to that idea. (B 374)

26. Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality. (B 395)

29. 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? (B 832-833)

31. Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

38. All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

39. All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

57. It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

59. Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

61. Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

62. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

68. The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.