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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.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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Renatus Cartesius
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.
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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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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?
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Conquer yourself rather than the world.
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In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
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Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance
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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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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
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The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
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On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
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Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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[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.
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In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.
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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
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Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.
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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
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