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For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
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Mathematician
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Military Personnel
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Philosopher
Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Ignorance
Effects
Instruct
Doubt
Doubts
Effort
Embarrassed
Found
Errors
Many
Effect
Seemed
Discovery

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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He who hid well, lived well.
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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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Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.
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I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
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Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.
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In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
Rene Descartes
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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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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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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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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.
Rene Descartes
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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
Rene Descartes
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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Rene Descartes
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The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
Rene Descartes
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He lives well who is well hidden.
Rene Descartes
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.
Rene Descartes
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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
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Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.
Rene Descartes