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Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

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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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Continue
Bring
Nothing
Long
Something
Never
Deceive
Think
Deceiving
Thinking
Whoever

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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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Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
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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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I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.
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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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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
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The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
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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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I experienced in myself a certain capacity for judging which I have doubtless received from God, like all the other things that I possess and as He could not desire to deceive me, it is clear that He has not given me a faculty that will lead me to err if I use it aright.
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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.
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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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.
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Instead I ought to be grateful to Him who never owed me anything for having been so generous to me, rather than think that He deprived me of those things or has taken away from me whatever He did not give me.
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How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?
Rene Descartes