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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.
Rene Descartes -
Conquer yourself rather than the world.
Rene Descartes
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If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.
Rene Descartes -
It is best not to go on for great quest for truth , it will only make you miserable.
Rene Descartes -
To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.
Rene Descartes -
Situations in life often permit no delay; and when we cannot determine the course which is certainly best, we must follow the one which is probably the best. This frame of mind freed me also from the repentance and remorse commonly felt by those vacillating individuals who are always seeking as worthwhile things which they later judge to be bad.
Rene Descartes -
I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes -
Before examining this more carefully and investigating its consequences, I want to dwell for a moment in the contemplation of God, to ponder His attributes in me, to see, admire, and adore the beauty of His boundless light, insofar as my clouded insight allows. Believing that the supreme happiness of the other life consists wholly of the contemplation of divine greatness, I now find that through less perfect contemplation of the same sort I can gain the greatest joy available in this life.
Rene Descartes
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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.
Rene Descartes -
I am thinking, therefore I exist. I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is solely to think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist. Accordingly this 'I' - that is, the soul by which I am what I am - is entirely distinct from the body, and indeed is easier to know than the body, and would not fail to be whatever it is, even if the body did not exist.
Rene Descartes -
The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.
Rene Descartes -
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.
Rene Descartes -
Be that as it may, there is fixed in my mind a certain opinion of long standing, namely that there exists a God who is able to do anything and by whom I, such as I am, have been created. How do I know that he did not bring it about that there is no earth at all, no heavens, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, and yet bringing it about that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they do now?
Rene Descartes -
So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.
Rene Descartes
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The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
Rene Descartes -
The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all.
Rene Descartes -
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Rene Descartes -
The mind effortlessly and automatically takes in new ideas, which remain in limbo until verified or rejected by conscious, rational analysis.
Rene Descartes -
All is to be doubted.
Rene Descartes -
Reason is nothing without imagination.
Rene Descartes
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By 'God', I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.
Rene Descartes -
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.
Rene Descartes -
I have concluded the evident existence of God, and that my existence depends entirely on God in all the moments of my life, that I do not think that the human spirit may know anything with greater evidence and certitude.
Rene Descartes -
I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.
Rene Descartes