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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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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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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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... 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.
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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
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For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false rather than those others which we experience when awake, since the former are often not less vivid and distinct than the latter?
Rene Descartes
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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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There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
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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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
Rene Descartes
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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
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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
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Rene Descartes
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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
Rene Descartes
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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
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
Rene Descartes
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I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.
Rene Descartes
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes