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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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Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
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He who hid well, lived well.
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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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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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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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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.
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The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
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Everything is self-evident.
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The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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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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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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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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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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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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