Quote

I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

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
Belief
Knowledge
Custom
Certain
Customs
Much
Beliefs
Convinced
Atheism
Based
Example

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
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
Image
Doubt is the origin of wisdom
Rene Descartes
Image
The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
Rene Descartes
Image
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Rene Descartes
Image
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
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
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?
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
He who hid well, lived well.
Rene Descartes
Image
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
Image
Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
Rene Descartes
Image
Nothing comes out of nothing.
Rene Descartes
Image
There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
Rene Descartes
Image
In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.
Rene Descartes
Image
In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
Rene Descartes
Image
Few look for truth many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
Rene Descartes
Image
God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
Image
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.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
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