Immanuel Kant Quotes About Duty

Quotes about: Duty

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

  Immanuel Kant

  Done, Action, Moral

• Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized comes, at length, really to love him to whom he has done good.

  Immanuel Kant

  Kindness, Practice, Done

• [S]uppose the mind of [a] friend of humanity were clouded over with his own grief, extinguishing all sympathetic participation in the fate of others; he still has the resources to be beneficent to those suffering distress, but the distress of others does not touch him because he is sufficiently busy with his own; and now, where no inclination any longer stimulates him to it, he tears himself out of his deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination, solely from duty.

  Immanuel Kant

  Grief, Fate, Psychology

• Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but, thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fulness and consummation of the inclination to do good.

  Immanuel Kant

  Practice, Done, Charity

• What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.

  Immanuel Kant

  Inspirational, Self Improvement, Duty

• Beneficence is a duty.

  Immanuel Kant

  Duty, Beneficence

  Immanuel Kant (2015). “The Ethics of Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics of Morals - Philosophy of Law & The Doctrine of Virtue + Perpetual Peace + The Critique of Practical Reason: Theory of Moral Reasoning”, p.319, e-artnow

• Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence.

  Immanuel Kant

  Rights, Giving, Secret

• When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.

  Immanuel Kant

  Happiness, Thoughtful, Mind

• This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

  Immanuel Kant

  School, Men, Hands

  Immanuel Kant (1855). “Critique of pure reason, tr. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn”, p.37

• cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.

  Immanuel Kant

  Philosophical, Animal, Men

• Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

  Immanuel Kant

  Religious, Philosophical, Recognition

  Immanuel Kant, Allen Wood, George Di Giovanni (1998). “Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings”, p.153, Cambridge University Press

• Men will not understand ... that when they fulfil their duties to men, they fulfil thereby God's commandments; that they are consequently always in the service of God, as long as their actions are moral, and that it is absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Long, Action

  "German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures" by Karl Hillebrand, (p. 207), 1880.

• Man's duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Law, Growth

  Immanuel Kant, Annette Churton (2003). “On Education”, p.11, Courier Corporation

• Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.

  Immanuel Kant

  Law, Duty, Reverence

  Immanuel Kant (2013). “Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, p.8, Routledge

• To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

  Immanuel Kant

  Work, Vanity, Self

  Immanuel Kant (2012). “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals”, p.14, Courier Corporation

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