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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.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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Neither the true nor the false roots are always real sometimes they are imaginary that is, while we can always imagine as many roots for each equation as I have assigned, yet there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root we have imagined.
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Science is practical philosophy.
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Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them.
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Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
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We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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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.
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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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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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Nothing comes out of nothing.
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Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
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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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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.
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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.
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I know that I exist the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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Everything is self-evident.
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Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.
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The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.
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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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