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How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?
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
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
The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
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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.
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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
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.
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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
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Rene Descartes
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.
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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.
Rene Descartes
If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.
Rene Descartes
He lives well who is well hidden.
Rene Descartes
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
How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Rene Descartes
Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
Rene Descartes
We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
Rene Descartes
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
Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
Rene Descartes
It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
Rene Descartes
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.
Rene Descartes
The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.
Rene Descartes
