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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
Astronomer
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Mathematician
Mechanical Automaton Engineer
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Life
Dream
Certain
Whole

More quotes by 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?
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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
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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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Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
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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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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.
Rene Descartes
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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
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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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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
Rene Descartes
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In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
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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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Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
Rene Descartes
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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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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
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Nothing comes out of nothing.
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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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.
Rene Descartes
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If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Rene Descartes