Author of quotes: Immanuel Kant

A person is free if he must obey not another person, but the law.

In order to determine whether something is beautiful or not, we relate the representation not to the object by means of the intellect for the sake of knowledge, but to the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure by means of the imagination.

Blessed be nature for quarrelsomeness, for enviously rival vanity, for an insatiable thirst for possession and dominion! Without them, all the excellent natural inclinations of humanity would remain forever undeveloped. Man wants consent, but nature knows better what is good for his kind; and she wants contention. He wants to live carelessly and cheerfully, and nature wants him to get out of the state of negligence and inactive contentment and plunge headlong into work and experience difficulties in order to find a reasonable way to get rid of these difficulties. Thus, natural incentives, sources of uncommunication and universal resistance, causing so many disasters, but also constantly prompting a person to a new tension of forces and, therefore, to a greater development of natural inclinations, perfectly reveal the device created by a wise creator; and this has nothing to do with the evil spirit, which allegedly interferes with the magnificent arrangement created by the creator, or spoils it out of envy.

Denying the positive benefits of criticism is like arguing that the police do not bring any positive benefits, since its main task is to prevent violence by some citizens against others so that everyone can calmly and fearlessly go about their business.

We are rich not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.
What enriches us is not what we have, but what we can do without.

The right of nations in the course of hostilities is the most delicate issue imaginable. How can laws be established to govern a situation that, by its very nature, does not permit any laws?

The highest among duties is a deep respect for the rights of others. It is our duty to deeply respect the right of others and to value it as a sacred thing. There is nothing more sacred in the world than the right of others. It is inviolable and inviolable. A curse to the one who infringes on the right of others and tramples his feet. Human rights must provide him with security, it is stronger than any weapon and more reliable than all walls.

Do so that the maxim of your will could be a universal law.

Metaphysics is the battlefield of endless arguments of the mind. A strange fate has fallen to the lot of the human mind in one of the forms of its knowledge: it is besieged by questions from which it cannot evade, since they are imposed on it by its own nature; but at the same time he cannot answer them, since they exceed all his possibilities.

I feel all the thirst for knowledge, the restless striving pulls me forward and forward, and every success in this field gives me joy.

Have the courage to use your own mind.

The highest good is the unity of virtue and well-being. Reason demands that this good be realized.

Everyone recognizes that, despite the existence of all the grounds for the production of plants and trees, correctly located flower beds, alleys, etc., are possible only thanks to the reason that disposes them, and thanks to the will that implements them. Any productive force, as well as all other data for possibility, without reason is insufficient to make the possibility of such an order complete.

I avoided refutation in every possible way, no matter how significantly my positions differed from those of others. Let the reader himself, who has mastered the meaning of both, compare them. If we tested the unbiased judgments of various thinking persons with the sincerity of an incorruptible judge who weighs the arguments of the disputing parties in such a way that he himself mentally imagines himself in the place of those who express them, and thus can recognize in them all the power that they only generally can have, and only then decides which side to take, then philosophers would disagree much less and unfeigned justice, impartial impartiality in the readiness to take the side of the enemy himself to the extent that it is possible, would soon unite inquisitive minds on the same path.