Immanuel Kant Quotes

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

The fundamental proposition of the apriorist theory is that knowledge is made up of two sorts of elements, which cannot be reduced into one another, and which are like two distinct layers superimposed one upon the other.

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

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

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

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

The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.

Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.

Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.

I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.

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.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

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.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.

If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.