Immanuel Kant citáty

page 4

„Všetko naše poznanie začína zmyslami, pokračuje pochopením a končí dôvodom.“

„Človek, ktorý prejavuje krutosť voči zvieratám, nie je o nič menej zatvrdnutý ani voči ľuďom. Ľudské srdce môžeme spoznávať aj vo vzťahu k zvieratám.“

„Muž je žiarlivý, keď miluje; žena i keď nemiluje.“

„Keby ľudia boli schopní navzájom si čítať myšlienky, vyhýbali by sa jeden druhému.“

„Ženy sú ako španielske domy. Majú veľa dverí a málo okien. Je ľahšie vniknúť do ich sŕdc, ako do nich nahliadnuť.“

„Proti trampotám života dal Boh človeku tri veci - nádej, spánok a smiech.“

„Nebo obdarilo ľudí na zmiernenie útrap života tromi vecami - nádejou, spánkom a smiechom.“

„Najmenej sa boja smrti tí, ktorých život má najväčšiu cenu.“

„Vnímajme život ako detskú hru, v ktorej ide len o čestnosť, dobré srdce, a povinnosť voči sebe samému.“

„Pozitívne dobro, ktoré môžu vlády vykonať, je obmedzené na odstraňovanie prekážok k dobrému životu.“

„Človeka, ktorý si zlomil nohu, môžeme v jeho nešťastí trochu utešiť, keď mu pripomenieme, že si mohol rovnako dobre zlomiť väzy.“

„Ženská osobnosť je ako more - rozochveje ju najslabší závan a pritom unesie najťažšie bremená.“

„Keď sa úprimne a dôkladne porovnávame s mravným zákonom, s jeho posvätnosťou a prísnosťou, musí z toho nevyhnutne plynúť opravdivá pokora. Avšak to, že sme schopní takéhoto vnútorného zákonodarstva, že fyzický človek sa cíti nútený uctiť si vo svojej vlastnej osobe morálneho človeka, ho zároveň povznáša a dáva mu to najvyššie sebaocenie ako pocit jeho vnútornej hodnoty, na základe ktorej nie je za žiadnu cenu podkupný a má nepomíňajúcu sa hodnotu, čo mu vštepuje úctu voči sebe samému.“

„Jednou z najväčších a najčistejších radostí je oddych po práci.“

„Prvou starosťou človeka by nemalo byť šťastie, ale to, aby bol toho šťastia hodný.“

„Keď sa to vezme v celku, čím sú ľudia civilizovanejší, tým sú väčší herci.“

„Aj tá najúprimnejšia žena skrýva na dne svojho srdca nejaké tajomstvo.“

„Neschopnosť utvoriť si úsudok je vlastne to, čomu hovoríme hlúposť a proti tomuto neduhu niet pomoci.“

„Nevyhnutnými podmienkami čistého rozumu sú - Boh, sloboda a nesmrteľnosť.“

„Nie sme na svete preto, aby sme boli šťastní, ale preto, aby sme plnili svoje povinnosti.“

„Čím máme viac lásky, tým sa ľahšie pretĺkame svetom.“

„Človek je jediný živočích, ktorý musí pracovať.“

„Prečítal som v živote mnoho múdrych a dobrých kníh. Ani v jednej som však nenašiel nič, čo by ma tak uspokojilo a potešilo moje srdce, ako tieto slová 23. žalmu: "Ty, Pane, si so mnou."“

„Vedieť, načo by bolo rozumné sa opýtať, je veľký a potrebný dôkaz inteligencie a pochopenia.“

„Človek sa nemôže stať človekom iba vychovaním.“

„Lekári si myslia, že ktovieako pomohli chorému, keď chorobe dali vhodné meno.“

„Ušľachtilý človek trpí utrpením druhých, ako by bol za nich zodpovedný.“

„Dobré činy len kvôli návyku prestávajú byť cnosťou. Dobro je len to, čo robíme zámerne.“

„Bez entuziazmu sa vo svete nič veľkého nevykonalo.“

„Milovať blížneho znamená rád plniť každú povinnosť, ktorú voči nemu mám.“

„Je možné, že nie všetko je pravda, čo človek za pravdu považuje, ale vo všetkom, čo hovorí, musí byť pravdovravný.“

„Manželstvo, to je spojenie dvoch osôb rozličného pohlavia k celoživotnému vzájomnému vlastnení svojich sexuálnych vlastností.“

„Môže byť niečo zvrátenejšie, ako hovoriť deťom o inom svete, keď sotva prišli na tento svet?“

„Múdreho možno ľahko presvedčiť, hlupáka len horko-ťažko prehovoriť.“

„Na človeku je jedine dobré - jeho dobrá vôľa.“

„Nedospelosť je neschopnosť používať svoj rozum bez cudzieho vedenia.“

„Niet nič praktickejšie ako dobrá teória.“

„Okrem dobrého úmyslu na svete niet ničoho, čo by bolo možno akceptovať bez výhrady.“

„Ženy jsou jako španělské domy. Mají mnoho dveří a málo oken. Je snažší uniknout do jejich srdcí, než do nich nahlédnout.“

„Vychovávanie je najväčší a najťažší problém, ktorý je možno človeku uložiť.“

„Nemáme do činenia s inými predmetmi ako tými, ktoré patria k možnej skúsenosti, lebo ak nám nemôžu byť dané v nijakej skúsenosti, potom sú pre nás ničím.“

„Akákoľvek sila sa pozná len vďaka prekážkam, ktoré dokáže prekonať.“

„Maj aj odvahu používať svoj vlastný rozum.“

„Posudzuj podľa takých zásad, o ktorých si presvedčený, že by bolo dobré, aby sa stali všeobecným zákonom.“

„Šťastie nie je ideálom rozumu, ale predstavivosti.“

“Do what is right, though the world may perish.”

“Even if there never have been actions arising from such pure sources, what is at issue here is not whether this or that happened; that, instead, reason by itself and independently of all appearances commands what ought to happen; that, accordingly, actions of which the world has perhaps so far given no example, and whose very practicability might be very much doubted by one who bases everything on experience, are still inflexibly commanded by reason … because … duty … lies, prior to all experience, in the idea of a reason determing the will by means of apriori grounds.”

“Human reason is by nature architectonic.”

“There is … only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

“Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.”

“For it is extremely absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must incline.”

“For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer’s question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.”

“Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.”

“There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.”

“All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.”

“Let us suppose there was a teacher of whom an historical record (or, at least, a widespread belief which is not basically disputable) reports that he was the first to expound publicly a pure and searching religion, comprehensible to the whole world. … Suppose that all he did was done even in the face of a dominant ecclesiastical faith which was onerous and not conducive to moral ends (a faith whose perfunctory worship can serve as a type of all the other faiths, at bottom merely statutory, which were current in the world at the time). Suppose, further, we find that he had made this universal religion of reason the highest and indispensable condition of every religious faith whatsoever … and this without further adding to this faith burdensome new ordinances or wishing to transform acts which he had initiated into peculiar holy practices, required in themselves as being constituent elements of religion. After this description one will not fail to recognize the person who can be referenced, not indeed as the founder of the religion which, free from every dogma, is engraved in all men’s hearts (for it does not have its origin in an arbitrary will), but as the founder of the first true church.”

“Civil equality, as the right of the citizen to recognize no one as a superior among the people in relation to himself…; and”

“The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.”

“The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end.”

“Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastical, high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a complement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus for the realization of perpetual peace.”

“We can indeed recognize a tremendous difference in manner, but not in principle, between a shaman of the Tunguses and a European prelate: … for, as regards principle, they both belong to one and the same class, namely, the class of those who let their worship of God consist in what in itself can never make man better (in faith in certain statutory dogmas or celebration of certain arbitrary observances). Only those who mean to find the service of God solely in the disposition to good life-conduct distinguish themselves from those others, by virtue of having passed over to a wholly different principle.”

“Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.”

“Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e. g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.”

“Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.”

“Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.”

“Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a member of the commonwealth.”

“Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.”

“Thus our duties to animals are indirectly duties to humanity.”

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

“Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.”

“In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.”

“Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?”

“In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.”

“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”