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Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them.

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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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Better
Divides
Many
Required
Solve
Difficulty
Pieces
Hand
Possible
Hands
Divide

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
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Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
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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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I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.
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The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
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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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And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.
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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
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
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If ... it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power, namely, suspend judgement.
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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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[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.
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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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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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In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
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