Quote

How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?

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
Senses
Exists
Seems
Anything
Really
Way

More quotes by Rene Descartes

Image
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
Image
Wonder is the first of all the passions.
Rene Descartes
Image
He who hid well, lived well.
Rene Descartes
Image
...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
Rene Descartes
Image
But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
Rene Descartes
Image
God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
Rene Descartes
Image
Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
Rene Descartes
Image
This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.
Rene Descartes
Image
Doubt is the origin of wisdom
Rene Descartes
Image
Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.
Rene Descartes
Image
I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
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
Image
I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
Rene Descartes
Image
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes
Image
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
Image
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.
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
There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
Rene Descartes