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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Sleep
Dream
Things
Lunatics
Accustomed
Awake
Dreams
Imagine

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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.
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Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.
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I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am
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The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived, and so by that word we do not signify what we understand about a thing, but rather what we do not understand.
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
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He who hid well, lived well.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
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If ... it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power, namely, suspend judgement.
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.
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For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false rather than those others which we experience when awake, since the former are often not less vivid and distinct than the latter?
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Science is practical philosophy.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.
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