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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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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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I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am
Rene Descartes
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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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?
Rene Descartes
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
Rene Descartes
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I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
Rene Descartes
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
Rene Descartes
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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
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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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Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
Rene Descartes