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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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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.
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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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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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[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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Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.
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Science is practical philosophy.
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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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.
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Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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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.
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This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.
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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.
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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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Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
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If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
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Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them.
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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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