Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804), German philosopher Quotes

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: . What can I know? . What ought I to do? . What may I hope?

Men can never acquire respect by benevolence alone.

Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes to love him to whom he has done good.

The death of dogma is the birth of reality.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.

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?

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.

Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, ‘War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.'