Immanuel Kant
Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing … Thus the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars.
Source details
1781 · Critique of Pure Reason — "Being is not a real predicate"
Checked word-for-word against Critique of Pure Reason · 2026-07-18