Q0065

Immanuel Kant

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Thinker Immanuel Kant
School Critical Philosophy
Source Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Theme Morality
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, within the tradition of Critical Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of morality, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Immanuel Kant's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Immanuel Kant. (n.d.). Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0065

MLA: Immanuel Kant. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0065.

Chicago: Immanuel Kant. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0065.

Same thinker

More from Immanuel Kant

  1. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  2. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!
  3. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
  4. It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will.
  5. Enlightenment is the human being's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

All quotations by Immanuel Kant

Same theme

More on morality

  1. It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
  2. No one errs willingly.
  3. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.

Browse the morality theme