Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
Correspondent
Mathematician
Mechanical Automaton Engineer
Military Personnel
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Philosopher
Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Otherwise
Consider
Science
Able
Might
Demonstrate
Nothing
Unable
Things
Physics
Explain

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
Image
...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
Rene Descartes
Image
There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
Rene Descartes
Image
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
Rene Descartes
Image
God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
Image
... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.
Rene Descartes
Image
He lives well who is well hidden.
Rene Descartes
Image
He who hid well, lived well.
Rene Descartes
Image
[About Pierre de Fermat] It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things, in order to be able to deduce from them general rules, which might be applicable elsewhere.
Rene Descartes
Image
How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?
Rene Descartes
Image
Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
Image
Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
Rene Descartes