Great Throughts Treasury

"The notion of happiness is so indefinite that although every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills. The reason of this is that all the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances."

"The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will."

"The principal of ethics being a categorical imperative does not admit of proof, but it admits of a justification from principles of pure practical reason."

"There is... but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

"To secure one’s own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one’s condition, under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty."

"Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man."

"Virtue signifies a moral strength of will."

"What action would promote happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and consequently no imperative respect it is possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless."

"What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others."

"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

"What objects may be in themselves, apart from all this receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely unknown to us."

"Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise."

"With the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty; that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even with the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action."

"When the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward."

"All our knowledge falls within the bounds of possible experience."

"All alterations take place in conformity with the law of connection of cause and effect."

"Fine art... is a mode of representation which is intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the interests of social communication."

"All things in the world of sense may be contingent, and so have only an empirically conditioned existence, while yet there may be a non-empirical condition of the whole series; that is, there may exist an unconditionally necessary being."

"For there is not the smallest contradiction in saying that a thing in appearance (belonging to the world of sense) is subject to certain laws of which the very same as a thing or being in itself is independent."

"All substances, in so far as they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity."

"Every beginning is in time, and all limits to extension are in space. But space and time are in the world of sense. Consequently phenomena in the world are conditionally limited, but the world itself is not limited, either conditionally or unconditionally."

"Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind."

"I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself."

"How are space, time and that which fills both, the object of sensation, possible in general? The answer is: by means of the quality of our sensibility, according to which it is affected, in its peculiar way, by objects which are in themselves unknown and quite different from those appearances."

"Idolatry... is a superstitious delusion that one can make oneself acceptable to the Supreme Being by other means than that of having the moral law at heart."

"If the subjective constitution of the senses in general were removed, the whole constitution and all the relation of objects in space and time, nay, space and time themselves, would vanish... As appearances they cannot exist in themselves but only in us. What objects are in themselves, apart from all the receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely unknown to us. We know nothing but our mode of perceiving them - a mode which is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared in by every being."

"If the world is a whole existing in itself, it is either finite or infinite. But both alternatives are false... It is therefore also false that the world (the sum of all appearances) is a whole existing in itself. From this it then follows that appearances in general are nothing outside our representations - which is just what is meant by their transcendental identity."

"I will... venture to assume that as the human race is continually advancing in civilization and culture as its natural purpose, so it is continually making progress for the better in relation to the moral end of its existence, and that this progress although it maybe sometimes interrupted, will never be entirely broken off or stopped."

"If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful."

"In order to arrive at the reality of outer objects I have just as little need to resort to inference as I have in regard to the reality of the object of my inner sense, that is, in regard to the reality of my thoughts. For in both cases alike the objects are nothing but represenations, the immediate perception (consciousness) of which is at the same time a sufficient proof of their reality."

"In view of the complete systematic unity of reason, there can only be one ultimate end of all the operations of the mind. To this all other aims are subordinate, and nothing more than means for its attainment. This ultimate end is the destination of man, and the philosophy which relates to it is termed moral philosophy."

"It is God's will, not merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy."

"In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished."

"Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers."

"Man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must be always regarded at the same time as an end."

"It is morally necessary to assume the existence of God."

"No one, it is true, will be able to boast that he knows that he knows there is a God and a future life; for, it he knows this, he is just the man whom I have long wished to find... My conviction is not logical, but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say: It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but: I am morally certain, that is, my belief in God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter."

"It is plain that the hope of a future life arises from the feeling, which exists in the breast of every man, that the temporal is inadequate to meet and satisfy the demands of his nature."

"Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas."

"Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself."

"Suicide is not abominable because God forbids it; God forbids it because it is abominable."

"Synthesis in general... is the mere result of the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the sul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious."

"Taste is the faculty of judging an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful."

"The beautiful is what pleases in the mere judgment (and therefore not by the medium of sensation in accordance with a concept of the understanding). It follows at once from this that it must please apart from all interest. The sublime is what pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of sense."

"The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live."

"The consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me."

"The determination of what constitutes right in war, is the most difficult problem of the right of nations and international law. It is very difficult even to form a conception of such a right, or to think of any law in this lawless state without falling into a contradiction."

"The ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason, which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause."

"The permanent in phenomena must be regarded as the substratum of all determination of time, and consequently also as the condition of the possibility of all synthetical unity of perceptions, that in time can only be regarded as a mode in the existence of that which abides unchangeably. Therefore, in all phenomena, the permanent is the object in itself."

"The proposition that everything happens has its cause... has the peculiar character that it makes possible the very experience which is its own ground of proof, and that in this experience it must always itself be presupposed."