Quote

I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.

Rene Descartes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
Correspondent
Mathematician
Mechanical Automaton Engineer
Military Personnel
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Philosopher
Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Exist
Question
Knowledge

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness.
Rene Descartes
Image
There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
Rene Descartes
Image
Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Rene Descartes
Image
Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
Rene Descartes
Image
We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
Rene Descartes
Image
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Rene Descartes
Image
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
Rene Descartes
Image
Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
Rene Descartes
Image
Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
Rene Descartes
Image
Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
Rene Descartes
Image
And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
Rene Descartes
Image
... 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.
Rene Descartes
Image
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
Rene Descartes
Image
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
Image
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