Week 2022-42: Immanuel Kant - Collected Quotes

"God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system." (Immanuel Kant, "Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens", 1755)

"It is presumed that there exists a great unity in nature, in respect of the adequacy of a single cause to account for many different kinds of consequences." (Immanuel Kant, "Theoretical Philosophy", 1755-1770)

"The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be adorned or ornamented. A great height is just as sublime as a great depth, except that the latter is accompanied with the sensation of shuddering, the former with one of wonder. Hence the latter feeling can be the terrifying sublime, and the former the noble." (Immanuel Kant, "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime", 1764)

"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." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)

"Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts)." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)

"There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)

"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, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)

"Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination." (Immanuel Kant, "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics", 1785)

"Each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is gratification." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Judgment", 1790)

"We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Judgment", 1790)

"One says of a person who has travelled much, that he has seen the world. to the knowledge of the world than just seeing it. Whoever wants to must draw up a plan beforehand and must not just regard the world senses." (Immanuel Kant, "Physische Geographie" [Physical Geography], 1802)

"[…] there is a God precisely because Nature itself, even in chaos, cannot proceed except in an orderly and regular manner." (Immanuel Kant)

Week 2018-07

[#timing, #understanding]
"The developed structures at each point in the game are the past, and the possibilities existing in that situation are the future. Together they constitute the present. Properly understanding the past and future in this sense is the essence of good timing." (W. Cobb)

[#religion, #life]
"Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language." (Hilaire Belloc)

[#opportunity, #action]
"The frog lives by the side of the fragrant lotus, but it is the bee who gets the honey." (Ramana Maharshi)

[#education]
"What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give." (Phyllis D James)

[#sorrow, #joy]
"Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy." (Oscar Wilde)

[#hope, #wisdom]
"When hope is born, it is necessary to unite courage with wisdom. Only then is it possible to avoid violence." (Óscar Arias Sánchez)

[#reason, #control]
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason." (George O Welles)

[#change, #habit]
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." (Herbert G Wells)

[#truth, #experiment]
"Heresies are experiments in man's unsatisfied search for truth." (Herbert G Wells)

[#learning, #change]
"In times of change, the learner will inherit the earth while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." (Eric Hoffer)

Week 2017-36

[#love, #life]
"If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer.” (Gaston Bachelard)

[#success, #purpose]
"Two things are necessary for success in life; one is a sense of purpose and the other, a touch of madness." (John Harricharan)

[#life, #geometry]
"Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other." (Victor Hugo, Les Misrables, 1862)

[#thought, #human nature]
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." (William James)

[#journeys, #knowledge]
"A traveler without knowledge is like a bird without wings." (Musharif-Ud-Din)

[#happiness, #attitude]
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances." (Martha Washington)

[#reason, #passion]
"Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining;
And passion, unattended, is a flame that burns its own destruction." ( Khalil Gibran )

[#errors, #self control]
"When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." (Epictetus)

[#theory, #practice]
"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." (Leonardo da Vinci)

[#oder, #theory]
“All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal - a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world - two snake pits." (John Gardner, “Grendel”)

Week 2017-24

"Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic." (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

"Only in the eyes of love you can find infinity." (Sorin Cerin, “Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom”)

"If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea." (Richard Hofstadter)

"The problem with introspection is that it has no end." (Philip K. Dick)

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children" (Khalil Gibran)

"If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion." (Lin-chi)

"You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer." (Plotinus, "Enneads")

"The essence of all things is one and the same, perfectly calm and tranquil, and shows no sign of 'becoming'; ignorance, however, is in its blindness and delusion oblivious of Enlightenment, and, on that account, cannot recognize truthfully all those conditions, differences, and activities which characterize the phenomena of the Universe." (Ashvaghosha, "The Awakening of Faith", cca. 2nd century)

"All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter." (Sai Baba)

"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos." (Will Durant)

Week 2017-03

[#assumptions, #errors]
"Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions." (Frank Herbert, “Dune - Children of Dune”)

[#wisdom, #knowledge]
"To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things." (Saint Augustine)

[#skills, #growth]
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." (Henry David Thoreau)

[#love, #desire]
"Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company." (Milan Kundera)

[#letting go, #control]
"Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself." (Deborah Reber)

[#limits, #balance]
"Sometimes we have to travel to the edge of ourselves to find the center." (Buck Ghosthorse)

[#change, #perception]
"If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

[#appearances, #errors]
"Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly - it’s probably because two errors are canceling each other out." (Dave Bartley)

[#teaching, #practice]
"Never forget that, at the most, the teacher can give you fifteen percent of the art. The rest you have to get for yourself through practice and hard work." (Tan Soh Tin)

[#reason, #action]
"Those who will not reason perish in the act: Those who will not act perish for that reason." (W.H. Auden)

Week 2016-51

"To be successful you don’t need to do extraordinary things, you just need to do ordinary things extraordinarily well." (Jim Rohn)

"Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses." (Marilyn vos Savant)

"The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score." (Bill Copeland)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (George Bernard Shaw)

"He who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger." (Japanese saying)

"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it." (Colin Wilson)

"Life is a process of working out what's not working for you and disentangling yourself from it and trying then not walk into the same thing again. Watching your patterns and correcting them if you can." (Siobhan Fahey)

"The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination." (Carl Rogers)

"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master." (Epictetus)

"The best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing." (Theodore Roosevelt)

Week 2016-41

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." (Pema Chodron)

"You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while." (Eckhart Tolle)

"True mindfulness is the awareness that everything you encounter is a vigorous expression of the same living universe as you." (Brad Warner)

"When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion." (Herbert Spencer)

"Before you assume, learn the facts. Before you judge, understand why. Before you hurt someone, feel. Before you leave, commit to staying." (José Sánchez)

"Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness. Laugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of what you can’t change." (José Sánchez)

"The real meditation is how you live your life." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning." (C S Lewis)

"It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed." (Thomas Moore)

"Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end." (Scott Adams)