Background Image

...

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

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Intuition And Concepts Constitute...

Immanuel Kant

...

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.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Immanuel Kant

Aus So Krummen Holze, Als Woraus Der Mensch Gemacht Ist, Kann Nichts Ganz Gerades Gezimmert Werden. Out Of The Crooked Timber Of Humanity, No Straight Thing Can Ever Be Made.

But Although All Our Knowledge Begins With Experience, It Does Not Follow That It Arises From Experience.

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.

No-one Can Compel Me To Be Happy In Accordance With His Conception Of The Welfare Of Others, For Each May Seek His Happiness In Whatever Way He Sees Fit, So Long As He Does Not Infringe Upon The Freedom Of Others To Pursue A Similar End Which Can Be Reconciled With The Freedom Of Everyone Else Within A Workable General Law ? I.e. He Must Accord To Others The Same Right As He Enjoys Himself.

A Categorical Imperative Would Be One Which Represented An Action As Objectively Necessary In Itself, Without Reference To Any Other Purpose.

The Existence Of The Bible, As A Book For The People, Is The Greatest Benefit Which The Human Race Has Ever Experienced. Every Attempt To Belittle It Is A Crime Against Humanity.

Space And Time Are The Framework Within Which The Mind Is Constrained To Construct Its Experience Of Reality.

In Law A Man Is Guilty When He Violates The Rights Of Others. In Ethics He Is Guilty If He Only Thinks Of Doing So.

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.

You Only Know Me As You See Me, Not As I Actually Am

Laws Always Lose In Energy What The Government Gains In Extent.

In The Kingdom Of Ends Everything Has Either A Price Or A Dignity. Whatever Has A Price Can Be Replaced By Something Else As Its Equivalent; On The Other Hand, Whatever Is Above All Price, And Therefore Admits Of No Equivalent, Has A Dignity. But That Which Constitutes The Condition Under Which Alone Something Can Be An End In Itself Does Not Have Mere Relative Worth, I.e., Price, But An Intrinsic Worth, I.e., A Dignity.

Act So As To Use Humanity, Yourself And Others, Always As An End And Never As A Means To An End.

Cruelty To Animals Is Contrary To Man's Duty To Himself, Because It Deadens In Him The Feeling Of Sympathy For Their Sufferings, And Thus A Natural Tendency That Is Very Useful To Morality In Relation To Other Human Beings Is Weakened.

Act So That The Maxim Of Your Act Could Be Made The Principle Of A Universal Law.

Reason Must Approach Nature In Order To Be Taught By It. It Must Not, However, Do So In The Character Of A Pupil Who Listens To Everything That The Teacher Chooses To Say, But Of An Appointed Judge Who Compels The Witness To Answer Questions Which He Has Himself Formulated.

No State At War With Another State Should Engage In Hostilities Of Such A Kind As To Render Mutual Confidence Impossible When Peace Will Have Been Made.

Suicide Is Not Abominable Because God Prohibits It; God Prohibits It Because It Is Abominable.

For How Is It Possible, Says That Acute Man, That When A Concept Is Given Me, I Can Go Beyond It And Connect With It Another Which Is Not Contained In It, In Such A Manner As If That Latter Necessarily Belonged To The Former?

Philosophy Stands In Need Of A Science Which Shall Determine The Possibility, Principles, And Extent Of Human Knowledge à Priori.

But Only He Who, Himself Enlightened, Is Not Afraid Of Shadows.

All Our Knowledge Begins With The Senses...

Categorical Imperative

A Single Line In The Bible Has Consoled Me More Than All The Books I Ever Read Besides.

Enlightenment Is The Liberation Of Man From His Self-caused State Of Minority... Supere Aude! Dare To Use Your Own Understanding!is Thus The Motto Of The Enlightenment.

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.

Prudence Approaches, Conscience Accuses.

Here I Shall Add That The Concept Of Change, And With It The Concept Of Motion, As Change Of Place, Is Possible Only Through And In The Representation Of Time. & Motion, For Example, Presupposes The Perception Of Something Movable. But Space Considered In Itself Contains Nothing Movable; Consequently Motion Must Be Something Which Is Found In Space Only Through Experience -in Other Words, Is An Empirical Datum.

Words Of Wisdom

The More We Come In Contact With Animals And Observe Their Behaviour, The More We Love Them, For We See How Great Is Their Care Of The Young.

The Busier We Are, The More Acutely We Feel That We Live, The More Conscious We Are Of Life.

Three Things Tell A Man: His Eyes, His Friends And His Favorite Quotes

We Assume A Common Sense As The Necessary Condition Of The Universal Communicability Of Our Knowledge, Which Is Presupposed In Every Logic And Every Principle Of Knowledge That Is Not One Of Skepticism.

The Nice Thing About Living In A Small Town Is That When You Don't Know What You're Doing, Someone Else Does.

Maximum Individuality Within Maximum Community

Two Things Fill The Mind With Ever New And Increasing Admiration And Awe, The Oftener And More Steadily We Reflect On Them: The Starry Heavens Above Me And The Moral Law Within Me.

I Freely Admit That The Remembrance Of David Hume Was The Very Thing That Many Years Ago First Interrupted My Dogmatic Slumber And Gave A Completely Different Direction To My Researches In The Field Of Speculative Philosophy.

Through Laziness And Cowardice A Large Part Of Mankind, Even After Nature Has Freed Them From Alien Guidance, Gladly Remain Immature. It Is Because Of Laziness And Cowardice That It Is So Easy For Others To Usurp The Role Of Guardians. It Is So Comfortable To Be A Minor!

Do What Is Right, Though The World May Perish.

If A Man Is Often The Subject Of Conversation He Soon Becomes The Subject Of Criticism.

Manners Or Etiquette ('accessibility, Affability, Politeness, Refinement, Propriety, Courtesy, And Ingratiating And Captivating Behavior') Call For No Large Measure Of Moral Determination And Cannot, Therefore, Be Reckoned As Virtues. Even Though Manners Are No Virtues, They Are A Means Of Developing Virtue.... The More We Refine The Crude Elements In Our Nature, The More We Improve Our Humanity And The More Capable It Grows Of Feeling The Driving Force Of Virtuous Principles.

Act In Such A Way That You Will Be Worthy Of Being Happy.

Do The Right Thing Because It Is Right.

What Are The Aims Which Are At The Same Time Duties? They Are Perfecting Of Ourselves, The Happiness Of Others.

Self Improvement

Things Which We See Are Not By Themselves What We See ... It Remains Completely Unknown To Us What The Objects May Be By Themselves And Apart From The Receptivity Of Our Senses. We Know Nothing But Our Manner Of Perceiving Them.

Aristotle Can Be Regarded As The Father Of Logic. But His Logic Is Too Scholastic, Full Of Subtleties, And Fundamentally Has Not Been Of Much Value To The Human Understanding. It Is A Dialectic And An Organon For The Art Of Disputation.

Animals... Are There Merely As A Means To An End. That End Is Man.

In Every Department Of Physical Science There Is Only So Much Science, Properly So-called, As There Is Mathematics.

How Then Is Perfection To Be Sought? Wherein Lies Our Hope? In Education, And In Nothing Else.

One Who Makes Himself A Worm Cannot Complain Afterwards If People Step On Him.

We Find That The More A Cultivated Reason Devotes Itself To The Aim Of Enjoying Life And Happiness, The Further Does Man Get Away From True Contentment.

Our Knowledge Springs From Two Fundamental Sources Of The Mind; The First Is The Capacity Of Receiving Representations (receptivity For Impressions), The Second Is The Power Of Knowing An Object Through These Representations (spontaneity [in The Production] Of Concepts).

Freedom Can Never Be Comprehended, Nor Even Can Insight Into It Be Gained.

Experience Without Theory Is Blind, But Theory Without Experience Is Mere Intellectual Play.

The Wise Man Can Change His Mind; The Stubborn One, Never.

If, Like Hume, I Had All Manner Of Adornment In My Power, I Would Still Have Reservations About Using Them. It Is True That Some Readers Will Be Scared Off By Dryness. But Isn't It Necessary To Scare Off Some If In Their Case The Matter Would End Up In Bad Hands?

Imagination Is A Powerful Agent For Creating, As It Were, A Second Nature Out Of The Material Supplied To It By Actual Nature.

An Organized Product Of Nature Is That In Which All The Parts Are Mutually Ends And Means.

All Our Knowledge Falls With The Bounds Of Experience.

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.'

We Can Judge The Heart Of A Man By His Treatment Of Animals.

Nature, When Left To Universal Laws, Tends To Produce Regularity Out Of Chaos.

Act Only According To That Maxim Whereby You Can At The Same Time Will That It Should Become A Universal Law.

The Universal And Lasting Establishment Of Peace Constitutes Not Merely A Part, But The Whole Final Purpose And End Of The Science Of Right As Viewed Within The Limits Of Reason.

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.

In The Mere Concept Of One Thing It Cannot Be Found Any Character Of Its Existence.

The Inscrutable Wisdom Through Which We Exist Is Not Less Worthy Of Veneration In Respect To What It Denies Us Than In Respect To What It Has Granted.

There Can Be No Doubt That All Our Knowledge Begins With Experience.

Knowledge Experience

Knowledge And Experience

I Had Therefore To Remove Knowledge, In Order To Make Room For Belief.

After Death The Soul Possesses Self-consciousness, Otherwise, It Would Be The Subject Of Spiritual Death, Which Has Already Been Disproved. With This Self-consciousness Necessarily Remains Personality And The Consciousness Of Personal Identity.

[a Ruler Is Merely] The Trustee Of The Rights Of Other Men And He Must Always Stand In Dread Of Having In Some Way Violated These Rights.

It Is The Land Of Truth (enchanted Name!), Surrounded By A Wide And Stormy Ocean, The True Home Of Illusion, Where Many A Fog Bank And Ice, That Soon Melts Away, Tempt Us To Believe In New Lands, While Constantly Deceiving The Adventurous Mariner With Vain Hopes, And Involving Him In Adventures Which He Can Never Leave, Yet Never Bring To An End.

With Men, The State Of Nature Is Not A State Of Peace, But War.

Two Things Fill The Mind With Ever New And Increasing Admiration And Awe, The Oftener And More Steadily We Reflect On Them: The Starry Heavens Above And The Moral Law Within.

Man Desired Concord; But Nature Knows Better What Is Good For His Species; She Desires Discord. Man Wants To Live Easy And Content; But Nature Compels Him To Leave Ease... And Throw Himself Into Roils And Labors.

Act That Your Principle Of Action Might Safely Be Made A Law For The Whole World.

[r]eason Is... Given To Us As A Practical Faculty, That Is, As One That Influences The Will.

We Come No Nearer The Infinitude Of The Creative Power Of God, If We Enclose The Space Of Its Revelation Within A Sphere Described With The Radius Of The Milky Way, Than If We Were To Limit It To A Ball An Inch In Diameter. All That Is Finite, Whatever Has Limits And A Definite Relation To Unity, Is Equally Far Removed From The Infinite... Eternity Is Not Sufficient To Embrace The Manifestations Of The Supreme Being, If It Is Not Combined With The Infinitude Of Space.

I Ought Never To Act Except In Such A Way That I Could Also Will That My Maxim Should Become A Universal Law.

All Our Knowledge Begins With The Senses, Proceeds Then To The Understanding, And Ends With Reason. There Is Nothing Higher Than Reason.

Innocence Is Indeed A Glorious Thing; But, Unfortunately, It Does Not Keep Very Well And Is Easily Led Astray.

The Hand Is The Visible Part Of The Brain.

If We Could See Ourselves... As We Really Are, We Should See Ourselves In A World Of Spiritual Natures, Our Community Which Neither Began At Birth Nor Will End With The Death Of The Body.

To Be Beneficent When We Can Is A Duty; And Besides This, There Are Many Minds So Sympathetically Constituted That, Without Any Other Motive Of Vanity Or Self-interest, They Find A Pleasure In Spreading Joy Around Them, And Can Take Delight In The Satisfaction Of Others So Far As It Is Their Own Work. But I Maintain That In Such A Case An Action Of This Kind, However Proper, However Amiable It May Be, Has Nevertheless No True Moral Worth, But Is On A Level With Other Inclinations. . . . For The Maxim Lacks The Moral Import, Namely, That Such Actions Be Done From Duty, Not From Inclination.

The Bad Thing Of War Is, That It Makes More Evil People Than It Can Take Away.

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.

An Action, To Have Moral Worth, Must Be Done From Duty.

Freedom In The Practical Sense Is The Independence Of The Power Of Choice From Necessitation By Impulses Of Sensibility

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.

An Action Is Essentially Good If The Motive Of The Agent Be Good, Regardless Of The Consequences.

When A Thoughtful Human Being Has Overcome Incentives To Vice And Is Aware Of Having Done His Bitter Duty, He Finds Himself In A State That Could Be Called Happiness, A State Of Contentment And Peace Of Mind In Which Virtue Is Its Own Reward.

Art Is Purposiveness Without Purpose.

There Is Nothing Higher Than Reason.

Categorical Imperative

Is It Reasonable To Assume A Purposiveness In All The Parts Of Nature And To Deny It To The Whole?

The Greatest Human Quest Is To Know What One Must Do In Order To Become A Human Being.

The Sum Total Of All Possible Knowledge Of God Is Not Possible For A Human Being, Not Even Through A True Revelation. But It Is One Of The Worthiest Inquiries To See How Far Our Reason Can Go In The Knowledge Of God.

Knowledge Of God

[aristotle Formal Logic Thus Far (1787)] Has Not Been Able To Advance A Single Step, And Hence Is To All Appearances Closed And Completed.

All Perception Is Colored By Emotion.

It Is Never Too Late To Become Reasonable And Wise.

The Business Of Philosophy Is Not To Give Rules, But To Analyze The Private Judgments Of Common Reason.

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.

The Wish To Talk To God Is Absurd. We Cannot Talk To One We Cannot Comprehend — And We Cannot Comprehend God; We Can Only Believe In Him.

Nature Does Nothing In Vain, And In The Use Of Means To Her Goals She Is Not Prodigal. Her Giving To Man Reason And The Freedom Of The Will Which Depends Upon It Is Clear Indication Of Her Purpose. Man Accordingly Was Not To Be Guided By Instinct, Not Nurtured And Instructed With Ready-made Knowledge; Rather, He Should Bring Forth Everything Out Of His Own Resources.

Feminine Traits Are Called Weaknesses. People Joke About Them; Fools Ridicule Them; But Reasonable Persons See Very Well That Those Traits Are Just The Tools For The Management Of Men, And For The Use Of Men For Female Designs.

Perpetual Peace Is Only Found In The Graveyard.

Man Must Be Disciplined, For He Is By Nature Raw And Wild.

Ghost Stories Are Always Listened To And Well Received In Private, But Pitilessly Disavowed In Public. For My Own Part, Ignorant As I Am Of The Way In Which The Human Spirit Enters The World And The Way In Which He Goes Out Of It, I Dare Not Deny The Truth Of Many Such Narratives.

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.

It Is Through Good Education That All The Good In The World Arises.

Natural Science Physics Contains In Itself Synthetical Judgments A Priori, As Principles. ... Space Then Is A Necessary Representation A Priori, Which Serves For The Foundation Of All External Intuitions.

Words Of Wisdom

The Yellow Indians Do Have A Meagre Talent. The Negroes Are Far Below Them, And At The Lowest Point Are A Part Of The American People.

Physicians Think They Do A Lot For A Patient When They Give His Disease A Name.

Look Closely. The Beautiful May Be Small.

There Is Needed, No Doubt, A Body Of Servants (ministerium) Of The Invisible Church, But Not Officials (officiales), In Other Words, Teachers But Not Dignitaries, Because In The Rational Religion Of Every Individual There Does Not Yet Exist A Church As A Universal Union (omnitudo Collectiva).

Fallacious And Misleading Arguments Are Most Easily Detected If Set Out In Correct Syllogistic Form.

The Instruction Of Children Should Aim Gradually To Combine Knowing And Doing. Among All Sciences Mathematics Seems To Be The Only One Of A Kind To Satisfy This Aim Most Completely.

When I Could Have Used A Wife, I Could Not Support One; And When I Could Support One, I No Longer Needed Any

There Is No Virtue In Penance And Fasting Which Waste The Body; They Are Only Fanatical And Monkish.

If Justice Perishes, Human Life On Earth Has Lost Its Meaning.

Give A Man Everything He Wants And At That Moment Everything Is Not Everything

Beauty Presents An Indeterminate Concept Of Understanding, The Sublime An Indeterminate Concept Of Reason.

Deaths, Births, And Marriages, Considering How Much They Are Separately Dependent On The Freedom Of The Human Will, Should Seem To Be Subject To No Law According To Which Any Calculation Could Be Made Beforehand Of Their Amount; And Yet The Yearly Registers Of These Events In Great Countries Prove That They Go On With As Much Conformity To The Laws Of Nature As The Oscillations Of The Weather.

Our Intellect Does Not Draw Its Laws From Nature, But It Imposes Its Laws Upon Nature.

Everything In Nature Acts In Conformity With Law.

The Ultimate Destiny Of The Human Race Is The Greatest Moral Perfection, Provided That It Is Achieved Through Human Freedom, Whereby Alone Man Is Capable Of The Greatest Happiness.

If An Offender Has Committed Murder, He Must Die. In This Case, No Possible Substitute Can Satisfy Justice. For There Is No Parallel Between Death And Even The Most Miserable Life, So That There Is No Equality Of Crime And Retribution Unless The Perpetrator Is Judicially Put To Death.

There Are Two Things That Don't Have To Mean Anything, One Is Music And The Other Is Laughter.

The Question Is Not So Much Whether There Is Life On Mars As Whether It Will Continue To Be Possible To Live On Earth

Religion Is Too Important A Matter To Its Devotees To Be A Subject Of Ridicule. If They Indulge In Absurdities, They Are To Be Pitied Rather Than Ridiculed.

In The Natural State No Concept Of God Can Arise, And The False One Which One Makes For Himself Is Harmful. Hence The Theory Of Natural Religion Can Be True Only Where There Is No Science; Therefore It Cannot Bind All Men Together.

Immaturity Is The Incapacity To Use One's Intelligence Without The Guidance Of Another.

Divine Guidance

Procrastination Is Hardly More Evil Than Grasping Impatience.

Procrastination

Philosophical Knowledge Is The Knowledge Gained By Reason From Concepts ; Mathematical Knowledge Is The Knowledge Gained By Reason From The Construction Of Concepts.

Heaven Has Given Human Beings Three Things To Balance The Odds Of Life: Hope, Sleep, And Laughter.

Enthusiasm Is Always Connected With The Senses, Whatever Be The Object That Excites It. The True Strength Of Virtue Is Serenity Of Mind, Combined With A Deliberate And Steadfast Determination To Execute Her Laws. That Is The Healthful Condition Of The Moral Life; On The Other Hand, Enthusiasm, Even When Excited By Representations Of Goodness, Is A Brilliant But Feverish Glow Which Leaves Only Exhaustion And Languor Behind.

I Shall Never Forget My Mother, For It Was She Who Planted And Nurtured The First Seeds Of Good Within Me. She Opened My Heart To The Lasting Impressions Of Nature; She Awakened My Understanding And Extended My Horizon And Her Percepts Exerted An Everlasting Influence Upon The Course Of My Life.

The Evil Effect Of Science Upon Men Is Principally This, That By Far The Greatest Number Of Those Who Wish To Display A Knowledge Of It Accomplish No Improvement At All Of The Understanding, But Only A Perversity Of It, Not To Mention That It Serves Most Of Them As A Tool Of Vanity.

The Light Dove, Cleaving The Air In Her Free Flight, And Feeling Its Resistance, Might Imagine That Its Flight Would Be Still Easier In Empty Space.

It Is Presumed That There Exists A Great Unity In Nature, In Respect Of The Adequacy Of A Single Cause To Account For Many Different Kinds Of Consequences.

By A Lie, A Man... Annihilates His Dignity As A Man.

Notion Without Intuition Is Empty, Intuition Without Notion Is Blind.

Melancholy Characterizes Those With A Superb Sense Of The Sublime.

Patience Is The Strength Of The Weak, Impatience Is The Weakness Of The Strong.

But Where Only A Free Play Of Our Presentational Powers Is To Be Sustained, As In The Case Of Pleasure Gardens, Room Decoration, All Sorts Of Useful Utensils, And So On, Any Regularity That Has An Air Of Constraint Is [to Be] Avoided As Much As Possible. That Is Why The English Taste In Gardens, Or The Baroque Taste In Furniture, Carries The Imagination's Freedom Very Far, Even To The Verge Of The Grotesque, Because It Is Precisely This Divorce From Any Constraint Of A Rule That The Case Is Posited Where Taste Can Show Its Greatest Perfection In Designs Made By The Imagination.

The Only Objects Of Practical Reason Are Therefore Those Of Good And Evil. For By The Former Is Meant An Object Necessarily Desired According To A Principle Of Reason; By The Latter One Necessarily Shunned, Also According To A Principle Of Reason.

It Is By His Activities And Not By Enjoyment That Man Feels He Is Alive. In Idleness We Not Only Feel That Life Is Fleeting, But We Also Feel Lifeless.

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.

The Only Thing That Is Good Without Qualification Is A Good Will.

The Science Of Mathematics Presents The Most Brilliant Example Of How Pure Reason May Successfully Enlarge Its Domain Without The Aid Of Experience

Parents Usually Educate Their Children Merely In Such A Manner Than However Bad The World May Be, They May Adapt Themselves To Its Present Conditions. But They Ought To Give Them An Education So Much Better Than This, That A Better Condition Of Things May Thereby Be Brought About By The Future.

Psychologists Have Hitherto Failed To Realize That Imagination Is A Necessary Ingredient Of Perception Itself.

Often War Is Waged Only In Order To Show Valor; Thus An Inner Dignity Is Ascribed To War Itself, And Even Some Philosophers Have Praised It As An Ennoblement Of Humanity, Forgetting The Pronouncement Of The Greek Who Said, 'war Is An Evil In As Much As It Produces More Wicked Men Than It Takes Away.'

Laziness And Cowardice Explain Why So Many Men. . . Remain Under A Life-long Tutelage And Why It Is So Easy For Some Men To Set Themselves Up As The Guardians Of All The Rest. . . If I Have A Book Which Understands For Me, A Pastor Who Has A Conscience For Me, A Doctor Who Decides My Diet, I Need Not Trouble Myself. If I Am Willing To Pay, I Need Not Think. Others Will Do It For Me.

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! Have The Courage To Use Your Own Intelligence! Is Therefore The Motto Of The Enlightenment.

Physicians Think They Are Doing Something For You By Labeling What You Have As A Disease

What Can I Know? What Ought I To Do? What May I Hope?

Human Beings Are Never To Be Treated As A Means But Always As Ends.

I Am An Investigator By Inclination. I Feel A Great Thirst For Knowledge.

Moral Teleology Supplies The Deficiency In Physical Teleology , And First Establishes A Theology ; Because The Latter, If It Did Not Borrow From The Former Without Being Observed, But Were To Proceed Consistently, Could Only Found A Demonology , Which Is Incapable Of Any Definite Concept.

Standing Armies Shall In Time Be Totally Abolished.

Metaphysics Is A Dark Ocean Without Shores Or Lighthouse, Strewn With Many A Philosophic Wreck.

Each According To His Own Way Of Seeing Things, Seek One Goal, That Is Gratification.

Give Me Matter, And I Will Construct A World Out Of It!

All Trades, Arts, And Handiworks Have Gained By Division Of Labor... Where The Different Kinds Of Work Are Not Distinguished And Divided, Where Everyone Is A Jack-of-all-trades, There Manufactures Remain Still In The Greatest Barbarism.

Division Of Labor

A Lie Is The Abandonment And, As It Were, The Annihilation Of The Dignity By Man.

Enlightenment Is Man's Emergence From His Self-imposed Immaturity...no Thing Is Required For This Enlightenment.. .except Freedom; And The Freedom In Question Is The Least Harmful Of All, Namely, The Freedom To Use Reason Publicly In All Matters.

Maturity Is Having The Courage To Use One's Own Intelligence!

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... Morality Is Not Properly The Doctrine Of How We May Make Ourselves Happy, But How We May Make Ourselves Worthy Of Happiness.

Thrift Is Care And Scruple In The Spending Of One's Means. It Is Not A Virtue And It Requires Neither Skill Nor Talent.

A Philosophical Attempt To Work Out A Universal History According To A Natural Plan Directed To Achieving The Civic Union Of The Human Race Must Be Regarded As Possible And, Indeed, As Contributing To This End Of Nature.

Nature Does Nothing In Vain, And In The Use Of Means To Her Goals She Is Not Prodigal.

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.

Perhaps A Revolution Can Overthrow Autocratic Despotism And Profiteering Or Power-grabbing Oppression, But It Can Never Truly Reform A Manner Of Thinking; Instead, New Prejudices, Just Like The Old Ones They Replace, Will Serve As A Leash For The Great Unthinking Mass.

Reason Can Never Prove The Existence Of God.

Man Relates To Material Things Through Direct Insight Rather Than Reason.

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?

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.

Apart From Moral Conduct, All That Man Thinks Himself Able To Do In Order To Become Acceptable To God Is Mere Superstition And Religious Folly.

Beneficence Is A Duty. He Who Frequently Practices It, And Sees His Benevolent Intentions Realized, At Length Comes Really To Love Him To Whom He Has Done Good. When, Therefore, It Is Said, "thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself," It Is Not Meant, Thou Shalt Love Him First And Do Him Good In Consequence Of That Love, But, Thou Shalt Do Good To Thy Neighbor; And This Thy Beneficence Will Engender In Thee That Love To Mankind Which Is The Fulness And Consummation Of The Inclination To Do Good.

In All Judgements By Which We Describe Anything As Beautiful, We Allow No One To Be Of Another Opinion.

Even A Man's Exact Imitation Of The Song Of The Nightingale Displeases Us When We Discover That It Is A Mimicry, And Not The Nightingale.

Freedom Is The Alone Unoriginated Birthright Of Man, And Belongs To Him By Force Of His Humanity; And Is Independence On The Will And Co-action Of Every Other In So Far As This Consists With Every Other Person's Freedom.

Religion Is The Recognition Of All Our Duties As Divine Commands.

Reason In A Creature Is A Faculty Of Widening The Rules And Purposes Of The Use Of All Its Powers Far Beyond Natural Instinct; It Acknowledges No Limits To Its Projects. Reason Itself Does Not Work Instinctively, But Requires Trial, Practice, And Instruction In Order Gradually To Progress From One Level Of Insight To Another.

Out Of The Crooked Timber Of Humanity, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made.

Great Minds Think For Themselves.

I Have No Knowledge Of Myself As I Am, But Merely As I Appear To Myself.

Live Your Life As Though Your Every Act Were To Become A Universal Law.

[s]uppose The Mind Of [a] Friend Of Humanity Were Clouded Over With His Own Grief, Extinguishing All Sympathetic Participation In The Fate Of Others; He Still Has The Resources To Be Beneficent To Those Suffering Distress, But The Distress Of Others Does Not Touch Him Because He Is Sufficiently Busy With His Own; And Now, Where No Inclination Any Longer Stimulates Him To It, He Tears Himself Out Of His Deadly Insensibility And Does The Action Without Any Inclination, Solely From Duty.

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.

Rules For Happiness: Something To Do, Someone To Love, Something To Hope For.

There Will Always Be Some People Who Think For Themselves, Even Among The Self-appointed Guardians Of The Great Mass Who, After Having Thrown Off The Yoke Of Immaturity Themselves, Will Spread About Them The Spirit Of A Reasonable Estimate Of Their Own Value And Of The Need For Every Man To Think For Himself.

In Man (as The Only Rational Creature On Earth) Those Natural Capacities Which Are Directed To The Use Of His Reason Are To Be Fully Developed Only In The Race, Not In The Individual.

Sincerity Is The Indispensable Ground Of All Conscientiousness, And By Consequence Of All Heartfelt Religion.

Man's Duty Is To Improve Himself; To Cultivate His Mind; And, When He Finds Himself Going Astray, To Bring The Moral Law To Bear Upon Himself.

Only The Descent Into The Hell Of Self-knowledge Can Pave The Way To Godliness.

Both Love Of Mankind, And Respect For Their Rights Are Duties; The Former However Is Only A Conditional, The Latter An Unconditional, Purely Imperative Duty, Which He Must Be Perfectly Certain Not To Have Transgressed Who Would Give Himself Up To The Secret Emotions Arising From Benevolence.

If Man Makes Himself A Worm He Must Not Complain When He Is Trodden On.

I Am Myself By Inclination An Investigator.

Duty Is The Necessity To Act Out Of Reverence For The Law.

Every Human Being Should Always Be Treated As An End And Never As A Mere Instrument.

It Is Difficult For The Isolated Individual To Work Himself Out Of The Immaturity Which Has Become Almost Natural For Him.

Trending Author

Category