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

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
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Mathematician
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Exist
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Knowledge

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
Rene Descartes
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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
Rene Descartes
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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.
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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.
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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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I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am
Rene Descartes
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The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.
Rene Descartes
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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?
Rene Descartes
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes
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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
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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.
Rene Descartes
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There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.
Rene Descartes
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Everything is self-evident.
Rene Descartes
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For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance
Rene Descartes
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... 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
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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.
Rene Descartes