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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
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More quotes by Rene Descartes

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He who hid well, lived well.
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
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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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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.
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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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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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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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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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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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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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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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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
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Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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I experienced in myself a certain capacity for judging which I have doubtless received from God, like all the other things that I possess and as He could not desire to deceive me, it is clear that He has not given me a faculty that will lead me to err if I use it aright.
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De omnibus dubitandum
Rene Descartes