Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.
Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard.
Ich solle niemals anders verfahren, als so, dass ich auch wollen k o« nne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden. I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.
The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.
Two things fill the mind with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on: the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence.
If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on... then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.
Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.
He who would know the world must first manufacture it.
Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will.
Woman wants control, man self-control .
Every beginning is in time, and every limit of extension in space. Space and time, however, exist in the world of sense only. Hence phenomena are only limited in the world conditionally, the world itself, however, is limited neither conditionally nor unconditionally.
Innocence is indeed a glorious thing, only, on the other hand, it is very sad that it cannot well maintain itself, and is easily seduced.
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.
The great mass of people are worthy of our respect.
Experience may teach us what is, but never that it cannot be otherwise.
The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings.
To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for unnecessary answers, it not only brings disgrace to the person raising it, but may prompt an incautious listener to give absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, the laughable spectacle of one person milking a he-goat, and another holding the sieve underneath.
Freedom is the opposite of necessity.
The true religion is to be posited not in the knowledge or confession of what God allegedly does or has done for our salvation, but in what we must do to become worthy of this.
Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances that happen in it, I ask myself only ‘Can you also will that your maxim should become a universal law?’ Where you cannot it is to be rejected...