Treat humanity, in your own person or in another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
Handle so, dass du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person als in der Person eines jeden anderen, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloss als Mittel brauchest.
Philosophers
Immanuel Kant
Born in Konigsberg in 1724, Kant never left home yet redrew Western philosophy. His Critique of Pure Reason reconciled rationalism and empiricism. His categorical imperative remains a bedrock of ethics.
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Immanuel Kant's Other Quotes
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Have the courage to use your own understanding!
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.
Related Quotes
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
-- Socrates
No one desires evil.
-- Socrates
Ethics is the ground of being of human community — the way of aidagara (betweenness) between person and person.
-- Tetsuro Watsuji
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
-- Confucius
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
-- John Stuart Mill
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
-- Benedictus de Spinoza