“Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.”

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Woman wants control, man self-control.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

The great mass of people are worthy of our respect.

Laughter is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing.

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

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

Since the human race’s natural end is to make steady cultural progress, its moral end is to be conceived as progressing toward the better. And this progress may well be occasionally interrupted, but it will never be broken off.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

The outcome of an act commonly influences our judgment about its rightness, even though the former was uncertain, while the latter is certain.

Art is purposiveness without purpose.