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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
Correspondent
Mathematician
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Often
Illusory
Genuine
Sorrow
Worth
Joy

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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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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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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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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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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
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When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
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This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.
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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
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It's the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.
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There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.
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I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
Rene Descartes