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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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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Hold
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Favour
Shall
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Obliged
Might
Leisure
Always
Offer
Life
Offers
World
Whose
Uninterrupted

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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.
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I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
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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.
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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.
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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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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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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.
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Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness.
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We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived, and so by that word we do not signify what we understand about a thing, but rather what we do not understand.
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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
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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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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
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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.
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There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
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