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

True politics cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morals, and while politics itself is a difficult art, its combination with morals is no art at all; for morals cuts the Gordian...

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so...

[To think for oneself] is the maxim of a reason never passive. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent...

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say,...

Así, pues, el valor de todos los objetos que podemos obtener por medio de nuestras acciones es siempre condicionado. Los seres cuya existencia no descansa en nuestra voluntad, sino en la naturaleza, tienen, empero, si...

[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must...

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

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...

Jeg skal alltid handle slik at den regelen jeg handler etter kunne gjelde som allmenn lov.

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.

Dignity is a value that creates irreplaceability.

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...

Coffee! Coffee!

Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason...

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

Une politique valable ne peut faire un pas sans rendre hommage à la morale.

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn.

Laughter is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing.

An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge , purify itself of errors, and progress in general...

But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.

Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end

Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be...

If we suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could...

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does...

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

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...

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion.

Metaphysics… is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought...

Woman wants control, man self-control .

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.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction...

Was nicht ein Gegenstand der Erfahrung sein kann, dessen Erkenntniß wäre hyperphysisch, und mit dergleichen haben wir hier gar nicht zu thun, sondern mit der Naturerkenntniß, deren Realität durch Erfahrung bestätigt werden kann, on sie...

if adversity and hopeless grief have quite taken away the taste for life; if an unfortunate man, strong of soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet...

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

To be is to do.

…Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its...

(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason’s most important occupations? Still more, how little...

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne.