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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.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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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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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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Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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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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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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How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?
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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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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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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 accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
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...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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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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Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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Everything is self-evident.
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The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.
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