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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.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Errors
Behaving
Judgment
Correctly
Cases
Refrain
Simply
Avoiding
Clear
Error
Making
Clarity
Truth
Perceive
Sufficient
Distinctness

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
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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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But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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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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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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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
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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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[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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... 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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Nothing comes out of nothing.
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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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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.
Rene Descartes
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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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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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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