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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.
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
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.
Rene Descartes
I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
Rene Descartes
It's the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
Rene Descartes
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Rene Descartes
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
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
It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
Rene Descartes
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.
Rene Descartes
Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.
Rene Descartes
And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
Rene Descartes
Doubt is the origin of wisdom
Rene Descartes
Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes
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
Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
Rene Descartes
Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
Rene Descartes
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes
