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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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More quotes by Rene Descartes

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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
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When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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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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Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.
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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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The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
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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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Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.
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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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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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A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.
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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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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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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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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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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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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.
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How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes