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Rene Descartes Quotes
“Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
“A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.”
“I think; therefore I am.”
“I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen.”
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
“I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.”
“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.”
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
“Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.”
“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”
“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”
“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.”
“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
“The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.”
“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”
“The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”
“I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.”
“Everything is self-evident.”
“In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.”
“Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.”
“Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.”
“Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.”
“It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.”
“Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.”
“One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.”
“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”
“When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”
“There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.”
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
“Cogito ergo sum.”
“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”
“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
“Doubt is the origin of wisdom”
“Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
“To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.”
“And thus, the actions of life often not allowing any delay, it is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine the most true opinions we ought to follow the most probable.”
“You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.”
“But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.”
