Immanuel Kant Quotes

The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.

Morality in its noblest forms remains inexplicable unless one takes into account that power of growth in the human soul which has led generation after generation from lower religious and ethical standards to higher ones which often clash with worldly advantages.

We must wait for the slow progress of moral causes

History has put America in a position where its national security depends on its further moral growth.

The highest ethical duty is often to discard the outmoded ethics of the past.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

I fear … that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

For the first time in human history, there seems to be a radical increase in the proportion reaching principled morality.

Art makes you a better human being, and that reflects in society.

Well-read people are less likely to be evil.

Probably the deepest use of music and of art is to create conscience.

The essence of kitsch is the confusion of ethical and esthetic categories; kitsch wants to produce not the "good" but the "beautiful."

Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.

Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

He who possesses science and art, Possesses religion as well; He who possesses neither of these, Had better have religion.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.