Quote

The only secure knowledge is that I exist.

Rene Descartes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
Correspondent
Mathematician
Mechanical Automaton Engineer
Military Personnel
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Philosopher
Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Philosophical
Secure
Exist
Knowledge

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
Image
Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes
Image
De omnibus dubitandum
Rene Descartes
Image
Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
Rene Descartes
Image
Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
Rene Descartes
Image
I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Rene Descartes
Image
Conquer yourself rather than the world.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.
Rene Descartes
Image
It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.
Rene Descartes
Image
...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
Rene Descartes
Image
He lives well who is well hidden.
Rene Descartes