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Wonder is the first of all the passions.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness.
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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
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Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
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Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
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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.
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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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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.
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
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The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.
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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.
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De omnibus dubitandum
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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.
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There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
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... 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.
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Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.
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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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