# Immanuel Kant's best-known quotes

From Sapere aude to the starry heavens: Kant's most famous lines from the Critiques, the essay on Enlightenment and his shorter works, each with its source.

- 2 votes · 14 items
- Apr 15, 2025 · Julia Eder
- https://even.best/en/l/3022/immanuel-kant-s-best-known-quotes

## Top 13

1. **Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.
2. **So when you see a dogmatist come forward with ten proofs, you can be sure he has none.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Critique of Pure Reason, A 789/B 817.
3. **Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — What Is Enlightenment? (1784).
4. **Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — What Is Enlightenment? (1784), first sentence.
5. **… the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion.
6. **Act so that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The categorical imperative, Critique of Practical Reason.
7. **Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of Pure Reason, A 51/B 75.
8. **I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of Pure Reason, Preface.
9. **Man is the only creature that has to be educated.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — On Education, Introduction.
10. **Lack of judgement is really what is called stupidity, and there is no remedy for such a failing.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of Pure Reason, A 133/B 172.
11. **The sublime moves, the beautiful charms.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
12. **Deep solitude is sublime, but in a terrifying way.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
13. **Creation is never finished.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens.
14. **Metaphysics has as the proper object of its inquiry only three ideas: God, freedom and immortality.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of Pure Reason, B 395.

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