Immanuel Kant Quotes

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.

For the majority of mankind, religion is a habit, or, more precisely, tradition is their religion. Though it seems strange, I think that the first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way.

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

The real question is whether we can learn anything from our experiences upon which we may grow and help others to grow in the likeness and image of God. We know that if we rebel against doing that which is reasonably possible for us, then we will be penalized. And we will be equally penalized if we presume in ourselves a perfection that simply is not there. Apparently, the course of relative humility and progress will have to lie somewhere between these extremes. In our slow progress away from rebellion, true perfection is doubtless several millennia away

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.

I hope I'm a spiritual person. I'm trying to be a spiritual person.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

The grace thou hast will soon be less, if thou addest not more to it.

Being somebody who wants to be religious doesn't make me perfect and doesn't make me necessarily any better than anybody else. It maybe makes me better than I would have been if I didn't have that level.

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.

Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

Don't fool people to think you are better than who you are. Instead of trying to act changed, pray that you will be changed.

I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress.

We will not know Him, until we become like him.

Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong.

The man who is deeply discontented with himself is probably growing fast into the full likeness of Christ.

The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.

Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.

The place to begin the task of eliminating evil is within yourself.

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.

The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained.