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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.

Rene Descartes

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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
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Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Perception
Possible
Dream
Right
Perceptions
Dreaming
False

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Doubt is the origin of wisdom
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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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Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
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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.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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Instead I ought to be grateful to Him who never owed me anything for having been so generous to me, rather than think that He deprived me of those things or has taken away from me whatever He did not give me.
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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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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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He who hid well, lived well.
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Everything is self-evident.
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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.
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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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De omnibus dubitandum
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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.
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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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I experienced in myself a certain capacity for judging which I have doubtless received from God, like all the other things that I possess and as He could not desire to deceive me, it is clear that He has not given me a faculty that will lead me to err if I use it aright.
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