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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.

-Immanuel Kant

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The Only Objects Of

Immanuel Kant

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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.

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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.

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

One Is Not Rich By What One Owns, But More By What One Is Able To Do Without With Dignity.

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.

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

If Education Is To Develop Human Nature So That It May Attain The Object Of Its Being, It Must Involve The Exercise Of Judgment.

Prudence Approaches, Conscience Accuses.

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

A Man Who Has Tasted With Profound Enjoyment The Pleasure Of Agreeable Society Will Eat With A Greater Appetite Than He Who Rode Horseback For Two Hours. An Amusing Lecture Is As Useful For Health As The Exercise Of The Body.

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

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

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

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

All Natural Capacities Of A Creature Are Destined To Evolve Completely To Their Natural End.

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?

In The Metaphysical Elements Of Aesthetics The Various Nonmoral Feelings Are To Be Made Use Of; In The Elements Of Moral Metaphysics The Various Moral Feelings Of Men, According To The Differences In Sex, Age, Education, And Government, Of Races And Climates, Are To Be Employed.

He Who Has Made Great Moral Progress Ceases To Pray

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.

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.

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.

Two Things Awe Me Most, The Starry Sky Above Me And The Moral Law Within Me.

From Such Crooked Wood As That Which Man Is Made Of, Nothing Straight Can Be Fashioned.

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

If We Knew That God Exists, Such Knowledge Would Make Morality Impossible. For, If We Acted Morally From Fear Or Fright, Or Confident Of A Reward, Then This Would Not Be Moral. It Would Be Enlightened Selfishness.

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

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

Knowledge Experience

Knowledge And Experience

Happiness, Though An Indefinite Concept, Is The Goal Of All Rational Beings

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.

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.

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

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

All Our Knowledge Falls With The Bounds Of Experience.

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.

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

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

Human Reason Has The Peculiar Fate In One Species Of Its Cognitions That It Is Burdened With Questions Which It Cannot Dismiss, Since They Are Given To It As Problems By The Nature Of Reason Itself, But Which It Also Cannot Answer, Since They Transcend Every Capacity Of Human Reason.

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.

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

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.

One Cannot Avoid A Certain Feeling Of Disgust, When One Observes The Actions Of Man Displayed On The Great Stage Of The World. Wisdom Is Manifested By Individuals Here And There; But The Web Of Human History As A Whole Appears To Be Woven From Folly And Childish Vanity, Often, Too, From Puerile Wickedness And Love Of Destruction: With The Result That At The End One Is Puzzled To Know What Idea To Form Of Our Species Which Prides Itself So Much On Its Advantages.

Life Is The Faculty Of Spontaneous Activity, The Awareness That We Have Powers.

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

The Means Employed By Nature To Bring About The Development Of All The Capacities Of Men Is Their Antagonism In Society, So Far As This Is, In The End, The Cause Of A Lawful Order Among Men.

But A Lie Is A Lie, And In Itself Intrinsically Evil, Whether It Be Told With Good Or Bad Intents.

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.

Men Will Not Understand ... That When They Fulfil Their Duties To Men, They Fulfil Thereby God's Commandments; That They Are Consequently Always In The Service Of God, As Long As Their Actions Are Moral, And That It Is Absolutely Impossible To Serve God Otherwise.

To A High Degree We Are, Through Art And Science, Cultured. We Are Civilized - Perhaps Too Much For Our Own Good - In All Sorts Of Social Grace And Decorum. But To Consider Ourselves As Having Reached Morality - For That, Much Is Lacking.

Prudence Reproaches; Conscience Accuses.

Most Men Use Their Knowledge Only Under Guidance From Others Because They Lack The Courage To Think Independently Using Their Own Reasoning Abilities. It Takes Intellectual Daring To Discover The Truth.

The Desire Which A Man Has For A Woman Is Not Directed Towards Her Because She Is A Human Being, But Because She Is A Woman ; That She Is A Human Being Is Of No Concern To The Man; Only Her Sex Is The Object Of His Desires.

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

The Function Of The True State Is To Impose The Minimum Restrictions And Safeguard The Maximum Liberties Of The People, And It Never Regards The Person As A Thing.

The Sceptics, A Kind Of Nomads, Despising All Settled Culture Of The Land, Broke Up From Time To Time All Civil Society. Fortunately Their Number Was Small, And They Could Not Prevent The Old Settlers From Returning To Cultivate The Ground Afresh, Though Without Any Fixed Plan Or Agreement.

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

It Is Never Too Late To Become Reasonable And Wise.

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.

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.

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

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.

Human Reason Is By Nature Architectonic.

God, Freedom, And Immortality Are Untenable In The Light Of Pure Reason.

Democracy Is Necessarily Despotism, As It Establishes An Executive Power Contrary To The General Will; All Being Able To Decide Against One Whose Opinion May Differ, The Will Of All Is Therefore Not That Of All: Which Is Contradictory And Opposite To Liberty.

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.

Dare To Know! Have The Courage To Use Your Own Intelligence!

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

Human Freedom Is Realised In The Adoption Of Humanity As An End In Itself, For The One Thing That No-one Can Be Compelled To Do By Another Is To Adopt A Particular End. - 'metaphysical Principles Of Virtue

Nature Even In Chaos Cannot Proceed Otherwise Than Regularly And According To Order.

All Our Knowledge Begins With The Senses...

Categorical Imperative

Marriage...is The Union Of Two People Of Different Sexes With A View To The Mutual Possession Of Each Other's Sexual Attributes For The Duration Of Their Lives.

I Assert That, In Any Particular Natural Science, One Encounters Genuine Scientific Substance Only To The Extent That Mathematics Is Present.

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

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

God Put A Secret Art Into The Forces Of Nature So As To Enable It To Fashion Itself Out Of Chaos Into A Perfect World System.

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

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.

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

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.

Christianity Possesses The Great Advantage Over Judaism Of Being Represented As Coming From The Mouth Of The First Teacher Not As A Statutory But As A Moral Religion, And As Thus Entering Into The Closest Relation With Reason So That, Through Reason, It Was Able Of Itself, Without Historical Learning, To Be Spread At All Times And Among All Peoples With The Greatest Trustworthiness.

Upon The Solution Of This Problem, Or Upon Sufficient Proof Of The Impossibility Of Synthetical Knowledge A Priori, Depends The Existence Or Downfall Of Metaphysics.

Words Of Wisdom

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.

The Ideal Of The Supreme Being Is Nothing But A Regulative Principle Of Reason Which Directs Us To Look Upon All Connection In The World As If It Originated From An All-sufficient Necessary Cause.

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

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.

Without Man And His Potential For Moral Progress, The Whole Of Reality Would Be A Mere Wilderness, A Thing In Vain, And Have No Final Purpose.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Happiness Is Not An Ideal Of Reason, But Of Imagination.

Melancholy Characterizes Those With A Superb Sense Of The Sublime.

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

We Are Not Rich By What We Possess But By What We Can Do Without.

The Arts Of Speech Are Rhetoric And Poetry. Rhetoric Is The Art Of Transacting A Serious Business Of The Understanding As If It Were A Free Play Of The Imagination; Poetry That Of Conducting A Free Play Of The Imagination As If It Were A Serious Business Of The Understanding.

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

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.

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

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

The Human Heart Refuses To Believe In A Universe Without A Purpose.

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.

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

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.

Whereas The Beautiful Is Limited, The Sublime Is Limitless, So That The Mind In The Presence Of The Sublime, Attempting To Imagine What It Cannot, Has Pain In The Failure But Pleasure In Contemplating The Immensity Of The Attempt

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 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.

By A Lie A Man Throws Away And, As It Were, Annihilates His Dignity As A Man. A Man Who Himself Does Not Believe What He Tells Another ... Has Even Less Worth Than If He Were A Mere Thing. ... Makes Himself A Mere Deceptive Appearance Of Man, Not Man Himself.

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

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

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

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.

It Is Precisely In Knowing Its Limits That Philosophy Consists.

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

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.

Better The Whole People Perish Than That Injustice Be Done

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.

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.

For Peace To Reign On Earth, Humans Must Evolve Into New Beings Who Have Learned To See The Whole First.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

Have Patience Awhile; Slanders Are Not Long-lived. Truth Is The Child Of Time; Erelong She Shall Appear To Vindicate Thee.

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.

Freedom Is The Alone Unoriginated Birthright Of Man, And Belongs To Him By Force Of His Humanity.

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

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 That Faculty That Enlarges The Usefulness Of All Other Faculties.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Perception Is Colored By Emotion.

Everything In Nature Acts In Conformity With Law.

Thoughts Without Content Are Empty, Intuitions Without Concepts Are Blind... The Understanding Can Intuit Nothing, The Senses Can Think Nothing. Only Through Their Union Can Knowledge Arise.

I Am Myself By Inclination An Investigator.

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.

This Can Never Become Popular, And, Indeed, Has No Occasion To Be So; For Fine-spun Arguments In Favour Of Useful Truths Make Just As Little Impression On The Public Mind As The Equally Subtle Objections Brought Against These Truths. On The Other Hand, Since Both Inevitably Force Themselves On Every Man Who Rises To The Height Of Speculation, It Becomes The Manifest Duty Of The Schools To Enter Upon A Thorough Investigation Of The Rights Of Speculative Reason, And Thus To Prevent The Scandal Which Metaphysical Controversies Are Sure, Sooner Or Later, To Cause Even To The Masses.

Even The Song Of Birds, Which We Can Bring Under No Musical Rule, Seems To Have More Freedom, And Therefore More For Taste, Than A Song Of A Human Being Which Is Produced In Accordance With All The Rules Of Music; For We Very Much Sooner Weary Of The Latter, If It Is Repeated Often And At Length. Here, However, We Probably Confuse Our Participation In The Mirth Of A Little Creature That We Love, With The Beauty Of Its Song; For If This Were Exactly Imitated By Man (as Sometimes The Notes Of The Nightingale Are) It Would Seem To Our Ear Quite Devoid Of Taste.

Have The Courage To Use Your Own Reason- That Is The Motto Of Enlightenment. "foundations Of The Metaphysics Of Morals" (1785)

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

The Hand Is The Visible Part Of The Brain.

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.

All Appearances Have A Determinate Magnitude (the Relation Of Which To Another Assignable). The Infinite Does Not Appear As Such, Likewise Not The Simple. For The Appearances Are Included Between Two Boundaries (points) And Are Thus Themselves Determinate Magnitudes.

Every Man Is To Be Respected As An Absolute End In Himself; And It Is A Crime Against The Dignity That Belongs To Him As A Human Being, To Use Him As A Mere Means For Some External Purpose.

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

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.

[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.

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.'

Act In Such A Way That You Treat Humanity, Whether In Your Own Person Or In The Person Of Any Other, Never Merely As A Means To An End, But Always At The Same Time As An End.

At Some Future Day It Will Be Proved, I Cannot Say When And Where, That The Human Soul Is, While In Earth Life, Already In An Uninterrupted Communication With Those Living In Another World.

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

Nature Has Willed That Man Should, By Himself, Produce Everything That Goes Beyond The Mechanical Ordering Of His Animal Existence, And That He Should Partake Of No Other Happiness Or Perfection Than That Which He Himself, Independently Of Instinct, Has Created By His Own Reason.

Others Happiness

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.

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.

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

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

Genius Is The Ability To Independently Arrive At And Understand Concepts That Would Normally Have To Be Taught By Another Person.

The Only Thing Permanent Is Change.

Look Closely. The Beautiful May Be Small.

Time Is Not An Empirical Concept. For Neither Co-existence Nor Succession Would Be Perceived By Us, If The Representation Of Time Did Not Exist As A Foundation A Priori.

Words Of Wisdom

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

Always Regard Every Man As An End In Himself, And Never Use Him Merely As A Means To Your Ends [i.e., Respect That Each Person Has A Life And Purpose That Is Their Own; Do Not Treat People As Objects To Be Exploited].

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.

Of All The Arts Poetry (which Owes Its Origin Almost Entirely To Genius And Will Least Be Guided By Precept Or Example) Maintains The First Rank.

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

Thinking In Pictures Precedes Thinking In Words.

Always Treat People As Ends In Themselves, Never As Means To An End.

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.

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

Reason Should Investigate Its Own Parameters Before Declaring Its Omniscience.

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.

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

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

There Is Nothing Higher Than Reason.

Categorical Imperative

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

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

Art Is Purposiveness Without Purpose.

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.

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

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

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

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

***three Conditions Of Happiness*** If You Have Work To Do If You Have Someone You Love If You Have Hope Then You Are Happy Now!

Someone You Love

Art Does Not Want The Representation Of A Beautiful Thing, But The Representation Of Something Beautiful.

The Greatest Problem For The Human Species, The Solution Of Which Nature Compels Him To Seek, Is That Of Attaining A Civil Society Which Can Administer Justice Universally.

Law And Freedom Without Violence (anarchy) Law And Violence Without Freedom (despotism) Violence Without Freedom And Law (barbarism) Violence With Freedom And Law (republic)

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

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.

. . . As To Moral Feeling, This Supposed Special Sense, The Appeal To It Is Indeed Superficial When Those Who Cannot Think Believe That Feeling Will Help Them Out, Even In What Concerns General Laws: And Besides, Feelings Which Naturally Differ Infinitely In Degree Cannot Furnish A Uniform Standard Of Good And Evil, Nor Has Any One A Right To Form Judgments For Others By His Own Feelings. . . .

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.

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

The Two Great Dividers Are Religion And Language

I Learned To Honor Human Beings, And I Would Find Myself Far More Useless Than The Common Laborer If I Did Not Believe That This Consideration Could Impart To All Others A Value Establishing The Rights Of Humanity.

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