in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
Human reason is by nature architectonic.
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Aphorisms by Immanuel Kant
Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.
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It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him. He has even become fond of it and for the time being is incapable of employing his own intelligence, because he has never been allowed to make the attempt. Statutes and formulas, these mechanical tools of a serviceable use, or rather misuse, of his natural faculties, are the ankle-chains of a continuous immaturity. Whoever threw it off would make an uncertain jump over the smallest trench because he is not accustomed to such free movement. Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.
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The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.
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I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge and an impatient eagerness to advance, also satisfaction at each progressive step. There was a time when I thought that all this could constitute the honor of humanity, and I despised the mob, which knows nothing about it. Rousseau set me straight. This dazzling excellence vanishes; I learn to honor men, and would consider myself much less useful than common laborers if I did not believe that this consideration could give all the others a value, to establish the rights of humanity.
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The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment among men.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
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Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.
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Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.
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It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.
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