Quote

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

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
Variant
Probable
Probability
Philosophical
Follow
Ought
True
Power

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.
Rene Descartes
Image
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes
Image
I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
Rene Descartes
Image
With me, everything turns into mathematics.
Rene Descartes
Image
Science is practical philosophy.
Rene Descartes
Image
Everything is self-evident.
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
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
Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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 not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes
Image
It's the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
[About Pierre de Fermat] It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things, in order to be able to deduce from them general rules, which might be applicable elsewhere.
Rene Descartes
Image
Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.
Rene Descartes
Image
Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.
Rene Descartes
Image
Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Rene Descartes
Image
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes