Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.
Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.
What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.
A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.
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.
In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.
Morality is not 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
Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.
Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility
It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.
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.
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
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.
Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785)
Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.
If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.
***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!
Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.
Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.
All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.
It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of knowledge sufficient for action but insufficient to satisfy the intellect.
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 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.
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err — not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all.
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.
[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.
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.
[Aristotle formal logic thus far (1787)] has not been able to advance a single step, and hence is to all appearances closed and completed.
I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.
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.
A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience
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.
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.
Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.
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?
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.
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.