Quotes About Duty

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

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

An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.

it was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations.

Immanuel Kant

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

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

Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done

if adversity and hopeless grief have quite taken away the taste for life; if an unfortunate man, strong of soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content.

act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a general law of nature.

Handle so, daß die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne.

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

Ethical laws cannot be thought of as emanating originally merely from the will of this superior being as statutes, which, had he not first commanded them, would perhaps not be binding, for then they would not be ethical laws and the duty proper to them would not be the free duty of virtue but the coercive duty of law.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

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

Une politique valable ne peut faire un pas sans rendre hommage à la morale.

Immanuel Kant

Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.

All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law.

Ich kann, weil ich will, was ich muss.

You must, therefore you can. A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same thing.

Obra como si la máxima de tu acción pudiera ser erigida, por tu voluntad, en ley universal de la naturaleza

Only by what a man does heedless of enjoyment, in complete freedom and independently of what he can produce passively from the hand of nature, does he give absolute worth to his existence, as the real existence of a person. Happiness, with all its plethora of pleasures, is far from being an unconditioned good.

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