Categorical Imperative Quotes

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Kant is the most evil man in mankind's history.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.

Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else.

The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.

Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.

Kant ... stated that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge ... to make room for faith," but all he had "denied" was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.

Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.

[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.

I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

All our knowledge begins with the senses...

There is nothing higher than reason.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.

Early on, I learnt from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life lies in conscious participation in the making of history. The more I think of that, the more deeply true it seems to be. It follows that one must range oneself actively against everything that diminishes man, and involve oneself in all struggles which tend to liberate and enlarge him. This categorical imperative is by no way lessened by the fact that such an involvement is inevitably soiled by error: it is a worse error merely to live for oneself, caught within traditions which are soiled by inhumanity.

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.