Immanuel Kant Quotes

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

There are two methods of human activity - and according to which one of these two kinds of activity people mainly follow, are there two kinds of people: One use their reason to learn what is good and what is bad and they act according to this knowledge; the other act as they want to and then they use their reason to prove that that which they did was good and that which they didn't do was bad.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

A rational process is a moral process.

If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

The act of willing this or that, of choosing among various courses of conduct, is central in the realm of ethics.

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.

To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

In the 17 years since I graduated from this great College of Law, I have seen that, for many of us, it becomes increasingly easy to rationalize our actions in the name of expediency when facing difficult decisions-to choose a path where the ends justify the means. I want to ask you to challenge Machiavelli's philosophy. I want to humbly suggest that you be the guardians of a more complicated truth: that the means are as important-and sometimes even more important-than the ends.

That's always been my philosophy. - I've never thought of the consequences of a necessary action.

The conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason.

Reason also is choice.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

The will of man is by his reason sway'd.

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.

To look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.

Wisdom is an affair of values, and of value judgments. It is intelligent conduct of human affairs.