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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
Rene Descartes
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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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More quotes by Rene Descartes
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
Rene Descartes
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
Rene Descartes
I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
Rene Descartes
It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
Rene Descartes
How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Rene Descartes
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
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?
Rene Descartes
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
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.
Rene Descartes
... 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.
Rene Descartes
There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
Rene Descartes
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
If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.
Rene Descartes
The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
Rene Descartes
