Immanuel Kant Quotes

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.

Whoever criticizes others must have something to replace them. Criticism without suggestion is like trying to stop flood with flood and put out fire with fire. It will surely be without worth.

Do you really think a God who created the universe, billions of galaxies, stars, billions of planets- would promise to reward some little things in a pale blue dot (i.e Earth) for repeatedly saying that he is the greatest and kindest and for fasting? Such a great creator can't be so narcissist!

That Martí is a madman — but a dangerous madman.

[https://archive.org/stream/sextusempiricusa17556gut/17556.txt Full text of Pyrrhonic Sketches online]

You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

[to Evian] Go drink a bottle of yourself!

Why the hell do you have to be so critical?

Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

Much of what he says is of necessity erroneous, because it is influenced by the standard of knowledge of his time; but his criticisms are remarkable, while always dignified. He reflects the scientific errors of the period in which he lived, but with hints of a more advanced understanding.