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When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. 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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More quotes by Rene Descartes

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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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Science is practical philosophy.
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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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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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
Rene Descartes
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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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Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.
Rene Descartes
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
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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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes
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Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
Rene Descartes
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
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And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.
Rene Descartes
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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
Rene Descartes
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The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.
Rene Descartes
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
Rene Descartes
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
Rene Descartes
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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