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Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

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 greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
Rene Descartes
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
Rene Descartes
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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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He lives well who is well hidden.
Rene Descartes
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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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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.
Rene Descartes
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
Rene Descartes
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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
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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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Nothing comes out of nothing.
Rene Descartes
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So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
Rene Descartes
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
Rene Descartes
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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
Rene Descartes
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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.
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.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes