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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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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.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
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Science is practical philosophy.
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On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
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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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[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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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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De omnibus dubitandum
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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.
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It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
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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.
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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.
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Everything is self-evident.
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Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
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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 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.
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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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