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De omnibus dubitandum

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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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Omnibus
Philosophical

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.
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.
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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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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
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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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
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Neither the true nor the false roots are always real sometimes they are imaginary that is, while we can always imagine as many roots for each equation as I have assigned, yet there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root we have imagined.
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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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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Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
Rene Descartes
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.
Rene Descartes
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This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.
Rene Descartes
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There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
Rene Descartes
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Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
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.
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Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.
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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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