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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.

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
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Thinking
Rather
Owed
Away
Deprived
Give
Generous
Anything
Grateful
Giving
Instead
Things
Ought
Never
Taken
Think
Whatever

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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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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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Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
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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.
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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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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
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Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.
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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.
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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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In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.
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Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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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?
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
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De omnibus dubitandum
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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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