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The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.

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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Mathematician
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Make
Progress
Provided
Always
Greatest
Slowly
Open
Straight
Excellencies
Greater
Road
Aberrations
Running
Minds
Aries
Keep
Travel
Aberration
May
Capable
Forsake
Mind
Highest
Likewise

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
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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?
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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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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
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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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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
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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.
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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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Everything is self-evident.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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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.
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De omnibus dubitandum
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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.
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The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
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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.
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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.
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
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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.
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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