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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.

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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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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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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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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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.
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On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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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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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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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.
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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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.
Rene Descartes
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Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.
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
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
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A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.
Rene Descartes
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If ... it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power, namely, suspend judgement.
Rene Descartes
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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
Rene Descartes
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
Rene Descartes