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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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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
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There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
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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.
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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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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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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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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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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
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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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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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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.
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He who hid well, lived well.
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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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The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.
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I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.
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