Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
Immanuel KantRead
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Interpretation
Enlightenment is the process of gaining knowledge and understanding to overcome ignorance.
In this quote, Immanuel Kant emphasizes the importance of personal growth and intellectual maturity. He suggests that enlightenment involves an awakening from a state of reliance on others for knowledge and a move towards independent thinking, encouraging individuals to question established beliefs and embrace their capacity for reason and understanding.
In practice
In a lecture on personal development, one might quote Kant to encourage students to think critically.
Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.
One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there; but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides itself so much on its advantages.
I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and nurtured the first seeds of good within me. She opened my heart to the lasting impressions of nature; she awakened my understanding and extended my horizon and her percepts exerted an everlasting influence upon the course of my life.
. . . as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings. . . .
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, "It shouldn't be like this." Her mentor replies, "There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Do you know who will go first on the Day of Resurrection to the shade of God...Those who when given what is right accept it, when asked for something give freely and who judge in favor of others as they do for themselves."
What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.
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