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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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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
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Imagine
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Assigned
True
Root
Corresponding
Many
Uncertainty
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Sometimes
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Real
False
Imagined
Always
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Quantity
Neither
Imaginary
Ontology

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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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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
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It's the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.
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Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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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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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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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.
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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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Science is practical philosophy.
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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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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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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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Situations in life often permit no delay and when we cannot determine the course which is certainly best, we must follow the one which is probably the best. This frame of mind freed me also from the repentance and remorse commonly felt by those vacillating individuals who are always seeking as worthwhile things which they later judge to be bad.
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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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