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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
[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.
Rene Descartes
If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.
Rene Descartes
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
It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
Rene Descartes
How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Rene Descartes
Science is practical philosophy.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
Nothing comes out of nothing.
Rene Descartes
On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
Rene Descartes
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?
Rene Descartes
It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
Rene Descartes
Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
He who hid well, lived well.
Rene Descartes
The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
Rene Descartes
Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
Rene Descartes
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes
