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It's the familiar love – hate syndrome of seduction: "I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it."
Rene Descartes -
I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.
Rene Descartes
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It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
Rene Descartes -
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.
Rene Descartes -
Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.
Rene Descartes -
If ... it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power, namely, suspend judgement.
Rene Descartes -
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 -
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.
Rene Descartes
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Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.
Rene Descartes -
Even the mind depends so much on temperament and the disposition of one's bodily organs that, if it is possible to find a way to make people generally more wise and more skilful than they have been in the past, I believe that we should look for it in medicine. It is true that medicine as it is currently practiced contains little of much use.
Rene Descartes -
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.
Rene Descartes -
The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.
Rene Descartes -
Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true and assured I have gotten either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.
Rene Descartes -
I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all things which we very clearly and obviously conceive are true: only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
Rene Descartes
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Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
Rene Descartes -
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.
Rene Descartes -
How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Rene Descartes -
Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
Rene Descartes -
There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
Rene Descartes -
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes
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At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.
Rene Descartes -
Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.
Rene Descartes -
Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
Rene Descartes -
Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness.
Rene Descartes