Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
Immanuel KantRead
The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Power can corrupt one's ability to think and reason freely.
This quote by Immanuel Kant suggests that having power can lead to a detrimental impact on one's rational thinking. When individuals are in positions of authority, they may become blinded by their own interests and lose their capacity for objective reasoning, ultimately leading to a misuse of their power and a degradation of moral and ethical judgment.
Themes
PowerReasonCorruptionAuthorityEthics
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about ethics in leadership.
More from Immanuel Kant
All quotes βThe 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.
Immanuel KantRead
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.
Immanuel KantRead
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.
Immanuel KantRead
. . . 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. . . .
Immanuel KantRead
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.
Immanuel KantRead
Similar quotes
A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism - the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty.
Michael PollanRead
Feminism... I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.'
Ruth Bader GinsburgRead
Every now and then, a person must do something simply because he wants to, because it seems to him worth doing. And that does not make it worthless or a waste of time.
E. L. KonigsburgRead
Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.
Hannah ArendtRead
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Albert EinsteinRead
All men would be masters of others, and no man is lord of himself.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead