Quotes About Morality

We now concern ourselves with a labor less spectacular but nevertheless not unrewarding: that of making the terrain for these majestic moral edifices level and firm enough to be built upon; for under this ground there are all sorts of passageways, such as moles might have dug, left over from reason's vain but confident treasure hunting, that make every building insecure. (A319/B377)

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.

O homem, e, duma maneira geral, todo o ser racional, existe como fim em si mesmo, não só como meio para o uso arbitrário desta ou daquela vontade. Pelo contrário, em todas as suas ações, tanto nas que se dirigem a ele mesmo como nas que se dirigem a outros seres racionais, ele tem sempre de ter considerado simultaneamente como fim.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: El que es cruel con los animales se endurece también en su trato con los hombres. Podemos juzgar el corazón de un hombre por su tratamiento de los animales (Immanuel Kant)

I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law.

In traditional forms of the doctrine of original sin, human beings are said to have inherited two moral liabilities from their first ancestors, Adam and Eve. One is guilt: we are said to share in the guilt of the first sin that our ancestors committed. The other is corruption, a perversion of motivation that is itself evil and makes people likelier to do wrong deeds.

An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according with which it is decided upon; it depends therefore, not on the realization of the object of action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed.

I class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether profit be regarded.

There can be only one reason why we must do what duty demands, and that is that we demand it of ourselves.

L'uomo deve mostrare bontà di cuore verso gli animali, perché chi usa essere crudele verso di essi è altrettanto insensibile verso gli uomini.

T]he sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favor it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity.

Agisci in modo da considerare l'umanità come scopo, e mai come semplice mezzo.

I express the principle of one's freedom as a human being in this formula: No one can compel me (in accordance with his beliefs about the welfare of others) to be happy after his own fashion.

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.

R]eason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly actions of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an example, the feasibility even if which might be very much doubted by one who founds everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by reason; that, for example, even though there might never yet have been a sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity in friendship required of every man...

If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.

El mundo de ningún modo se hundirá porque haya menos hombres malos.

Imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, that is, they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but they can never authorize us to set aside the true original which lies in reason, and to guide ourselves by examples.

Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being.

Puoi conoscere il cuore di un uomo già dal modo in cui egli tratta le bestie.

It must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here from which it seems impossible to escape. In the order of efficient causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends we may conceive ourselves as subject to these laws because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of will; for freedom and self-legislation of will are both autonomy...

The world will by no means perish by a diminution in the number of evil men.

all duties depend as regards the kind of obligation (not the object of their action) upon the one principle.

From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made.