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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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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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Everything
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More quotes by Rene Descartes

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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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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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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived, and so by that word we do not signify what we understand about a thing, but rather what we do not understand.
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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.
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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
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Reason is nothing without imagination.
Rene Descartes
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
Rene Descartes
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The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
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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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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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
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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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Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
Rene Descartes