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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.

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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If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.
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Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.
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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.
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
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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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He lives well who is well hidden.
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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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Everything is self-evident.
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The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
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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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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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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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Nothing comes out of nothing.
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Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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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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Neither the true nor the false roots are always real sometimes they are imaginary that is, while we can always imagine as many roots for each equation as I have assigned, yet there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root we have imagined.
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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