What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?
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.
Reason should investigate its own parameters before declaring its omniscience.
Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything.
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.
Human reason is by nature architectonic.
One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...
There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
One is not rich by what one owns, but rather by what one is able to do without, with dignity.
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.
Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.
Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
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?
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.
By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.
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.
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.