Immanuel Kant

1724–1804 · German philosopher

Topics: learning, life, mathematics, philosophy

• Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.

  — Immanuel Kant

• But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows, that all arises out of experience.

  — Immanuel Kant

• The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

  — Immanuel Kant

• Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.

  — Immanuel Kant

• It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

  — Immanuel Kant

• Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

  — Immanuel Kant

• All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

  — Immanuel Kant

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

  — Immanuel Kant

• Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

  — Immanuel Kant

• The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience.

  — Immanuel Kant

• All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

  — Immanuel Kant

• Die menschliche Vernunft hat hier, wie allerwärts in ihrem reinen Gebrauche, so lange es ihr an Kritik fehlt, vorher alle mögliche unrechte Wege versucht, ehe es ihr gelingt, den einzigen wahren zu treffen.

  — Immanuel Kant

• It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err — not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all.

  — Immanuel Kant