Categorical Imperative Quotes

Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the 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.

There is only one categorical imperative in golf, and that is to hit the ball. There are no minor absolutes.

God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

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?

All our knowledge begins with the senses...

There is nothing higher than reason.

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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.

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.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

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

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

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.

Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

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

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.