“Everything good that is not based on a morally good disposition, however, is nothing but pretense and glittering misery.”

— Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, 1784

About Immanuel Kant

1724 – 1804

German philosopher of the Enlightenment, author of the "Critique of Pure Reason".

“Have courage to use your own understanding!”

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

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”