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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.

-Immanuel Kant

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The Sum Total Of

Immanuel Kant

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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.

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Knowledge Of God

More From Immanuel Kant

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

All Our Knowledge Falls With The Bounds Of Experience.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

All Appearances Are Real And Negatio; Sophistical: All Reality Must Be Sensation.

We Ourselves Introduce That Order And Regularity In The Appearance Which We Entitle "nature". We Could Never Find Them In Appearances Had We Not Ourselves, By The Nature Of Our Own Mind, Originally Set Them There.

A Society That Is Not Willing To Demand A Life Of Somebody Who Has Taken Somebody Else’s Life Is Simply Immoral.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Knowledge Experience

Knowledge And Experience

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.

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

It Is Not God's Will Merely That We Should Be Happy, But That We Should Make Ourselves Happy

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.

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.

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.

Everything In Nature Acts In Conformity With Law.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

All Our Knowledge Begins With The Senses...

Categorical Imperative

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.

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.

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

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 Death Of Dogma Is The Birth Of Morality.

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

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

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

If It Were Possible For Us To Have So Deep An Insight Into A Man's Character As Shown Both In Inner And In Outer Actions, That Every, Even The Least, Incentive To These Actions And All External Occasions Which Affect Them Were So Known To Us That His Future Conduct Could Be Predicted With As Great A Certainty As The Occurrence Of A Solar Or Lunar Eclipse, We Could Nevertheless Still Assert That The Man Is Free.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Ours Is An Age Of Criticism, To Which Everything Must Be Subjected.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Standing Armies Shall In Time Be Totally Abolished.

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.

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.

This Spirit Of Freedom Is Expanding Even Where It Must Struggle Against The External Obstacles Of Governments That Misunderstand Their Own Function. Such Governments Are Illuminated By The Example That The Existence Of Freedom Need Not Give Cause For The Least Concern Regarding Public Order And Harmony In The Commonwealth. If Only They Refrain From Inventing Artifices To Keep Themselves In It, Men Will Gradually Raise Themselves From Barbarism.

Humanity Is At Its Greatest Perfection In The Race Of The Whites.

Science Is Organized Knowledge. Wisdom Is Organized Life.

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.

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

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.

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.

Do The Right Thing Because It Is Right.

It Is Never Too Late To Become Reasonable And Wise.

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

Human Reason Is By Nature Architectonic.

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.

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.'

The Existence Of The Bible Is The Greatest Blessing Which Humanity Ever Experienced.

Thoughts Without Content Are Empty, Intuitions Without Concepts Are Blind.

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

Enlightenment Is Man's Emergence From His Self-incurred Immaturity.

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.

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.

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.

Arrogance Is, As It Were, A Solicitation On The Part Of One Seeking Honor For Followers, Whom He Thinks He Is Entitled To Treat With Contempt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

All Human Knowledge Begins With Intuitions, Proceeds From Thence To Concepts, And Ends With Ideas.

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.

Maximum Individuality Within Maximum Community

That Logic Has Advanced In This Sure Course, Even From The Earliest Times, Is Apparent From The Fact That, Since Aristotle, It Has Been Unable To Advance A Step, And Thus To All Appearance Has Reached Its Completion.

Look Closely. The Beautiful May Be Small.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Why Were A Few, Or A Single One, Made At All, If Only To Exist In Order To Be Made Eternally Miserable, Which Is Infinitely Worse Than Non-existence?

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

If I Am To Constrain You By Any Law, It Must Be One By Which I Am Also Bound.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Science Of All These Possible Kinds Of Space [the Higher Dimensional Ones] Would Undoubtedly Be The Highest Enterprise Which A Finite Understanding Could Undertake In The Field Of Geometry... If It Is Possible That There Could Be Regions With Other Dimensions, It Is Very Likely That God Has Somewhere Brought Them Into Being.

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

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.

Ingratitude Is The Essence Of Vileness.

Inspirational Christmas

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

Enlightenment Is Man's Emergence From His Self-imposed Nonage. Nonage Is The Inability To Use One's Own Understanding Without Another's Guidance. This Nonage Is Self-imposed If Its Cause Lies Not In Lack Of Understanding But In Indecision And Lack Of Courage To Use One's Own Mind Without Another's Guidance. Dare To Know!

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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?

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

The Only Thing Permanent Is Change.

He Who Has Made Great Moral Progress Ceases To Pray

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It Is Precisely In Knowing Its Limits That Philosophy Consists.

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

Art Is Purposiveness Without Purpose.

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.

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

Two Things Strike Me Dumb: The Infinite Starry Heavens, And The Sense Of Right And Wrong In Man.

The Hand Is The Visible Part Of The Brain.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Always Recognize That Human Individuals Are Ends, And Do Not Use Them As Means To Your End.

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

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.

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.

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.

Better The Whole People Perish Than That Injustice Be Done

It Is Often Necessary To Make A Decision On The Basis Of Knowledge Sufficient For Action But Insufficient To Satisfy The Intellect.

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

I Feel A Complete Thirst For Knowledge And An Eager Unrest To Go Further In It As Well As Satisfaction At Every Acquisition. There Was A Time When I Believed That This Alone Could Constitute The Honor Of Mankind, And I Had Contempt For The Ignorant Rabble Who Know Nothing.

The Possession Of Power Inevitably Spoils The Free Use Of Reason.

The Two Great Dividers Are Religion And Language

...as Soon As We Examine Suicide From The Standpoint Of Religion We Immediately See It In Its True Light. We Have Been Placed In This World Under Certain Conditions And For Specific Purposes. But A Suicide Opposes The Purpose Of His Creator; He Arrives In The Other World As One Who Has Deserted His Post; He Must Be Looked Upon As A Rebel Against God. God Is Our Owner; We Are His Property; His Providence Works For Our Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom Is Independence Of The Compulsory Will Of Another, And In So Far As It Tends To Exist With The Freedom Of All According To A Universal Law, It Is The One Sole Original Inborn Right Belonging To Every Man In Virtue Of His Humanity.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Freedom Is That Faculty That Enlarges The Usefulness Of All Other Faculties.

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.

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

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Richard Barnfield

Bernard Law Montgomery

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