Quotes About Morality

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.

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will.

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

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.

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

If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for 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.

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

The true religion is to be posited not in the knowledge or confession of what God allegedly does or has done for our salvation, but in what we must do to become worthy of this.

From the crooked timber of humanity, never was a straight thing made.

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings.

We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

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

What does it avail, one will say, that this man has so much talent, that he is so active therewith, and that he exerts thereby a useful influence over the community, thus having a great worth both in relation to his own happy condition and to the benefit of others, if he does not possess a good will?

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances that happen in it, I ask myself only 'Can you also will that your maxim should become a universal law?' Where you cannot it is to be rejected...

What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every example of it presented to me must first itself be judged by moral principles in order to decide if it is fit to serve as an original example...even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him to be such.

If justice perishes, then it is no longer worthwhile for men to live upon the earth.

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

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.

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

Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end.

in its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct. Hence it is as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reasoning to argue freedom away.