Perpetual Peace and Other Essays Quotes

“The greatest evil that can oppress civilized peoples derives from wars, not, indeed, so much from actual present or past wars, as from the never-ending and constantly increasing arming for future war.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“The history of nature . . . begins with good, for it is God's work; the history of freedom begins with badness, for it is man's work.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“A league of a special sort must . . . be established, one that we can call a league of peace, which will be distinguished from a treaty of peace because the latter seeks merely to stop one war, while the former seeks to end all wars forever.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“The spirit of trade cannot coexist with war, and sooner or later this spirit dominates every people.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“That kings should be philosophers, or philosophers kings is neither to be expected nor to be desired, for the possession of power inevitably corrupts reason's free judgment. However, that kings or sovereign peoples (who rule themselves by laws of equality) should not allow the class of philosophers to disappear or to be silent, but should permit them to speak publicly is indispensable to the enlightenment of their affairs.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“War itself requires no particular motivation, but appears to be ingrained in human nature and is even valued as something noble; indeed, the desire for glory inspires men to it, even independently of selfish motives.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“Under a nonrepublican constitution, where subjects are not citizens, the easiest thing in the world to do is to declare war. Here the ruler is not a fellow citizen, but the nation's owner, and war does not affect his table, his hunt, his places of pleasure, his court festivals, and so on. Thus, he can decide to go to war for the most meaningless of reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure party...”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“A nation is not (like the ground on which it is located) a possession. It is a society of men whom no one other than the nation itself can command or dispose of.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“It is not without cause that men feel the burden of their existence, though they are themselves the cause of those burdens.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“Since the human race's natural end is to make steady cultural progress, its moral end is to be conceived as progressing toward the better. And this progress may well be occasionally interrupted, but it will never be broken off.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“The outcome of an act commonly influences our judgment about its rightness, even though the former was uncertain, while the latter is certain.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“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 fashion.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“The problem of organizing a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is: "Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that, although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“Objectively (i.e., in theory) there is utterly no conflict between morality and politics. But subjectively (in the self-seeking inclinations of men, which, because they are not based on maxims of reason, must not be called the [sphere of] practice [Praxis]) this conflict will always remain, as well it should; for it serves as the whetstone of virtue, whose true courage (according to the principle, “tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito”)35 in the present case consists not so much in resolutely standing up to the evils and sacrifices that must be taken on; rather, it consists in detecting, squarely facing, and conquering the deceit of the evil principle in ourselves, which is the more dangerously devious and treacherous because it excuses all our transgressions with an appeal to human nature’s frailty.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and other Essays on Politics, History and Morals

“The rights of men must be held sacred, however great the cost of sacrifice may be to those in power. Here one cannot go halfway, cooking up hybrid, pragmatically-conditioned rights (which are somewhere between the right and the expedient); instead, all politics must bend its knee before morality...”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“No nation shall forcibly interfere with the constitution and government of another.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“To assume that the ruler cannot ever err or that he cannot be ignorant of something would be to portray him as blessed with divine inspiration and as elevated above the rest of humanity. Hence freedom of the pen . . . is the sole protector of the people's rights.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“The only quality necessary for being a citizen (i.e., a co-legislator), other than the natural one (that he is neither a child nor a woman), is that he be his own master, consequently that he have some property to support himself.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“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.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays

“Nobody can claim himself to be practically proficient in a science and yet disdain its theory without revealing himself to be an ignoramus in his area.”
― Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays