Immanuel Kant Quotes

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.

You must consider, when reading this treatise, that mental perception, because connected with matter, is subject to conditions similar to those to which physical perception is subject.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.

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.

Imagination is a powerful force underlying all knowing

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.

All our knowledge begins with the senses...

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.