Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kantwas a German philosopher who is considered the central figure of modern philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our sensibility, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is unknowable. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth22 April 1724
CountryGermany
There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).
One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.
But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.
At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world.
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.
Freedom can never be comprehended, nor even can insight into it be gained.
Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.
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.
With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.
Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.
But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.
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.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
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.