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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

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The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.
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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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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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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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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
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Situations in life often permit no delay and when we cannot determine the course which is certainly best, we must follow the one which is probably the best. This frame of mind freed me also from the repentance and remorse commonly felt by those vacillating individuals who are always seeking as worthwhile things which they later judge to be bad.
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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 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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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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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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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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And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.
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Science is practical philosophy.
Rene Descartes
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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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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
Rene Descartes
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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
Rene Descartes