Rene Descartes Quotes
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It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.
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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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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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Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.
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Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.
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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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In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth.
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But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.
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These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demonstrations had led me to fancy that everything that can fall under human knowledge forms a similar sequence; and that so long as we avoid accepting as true what is not so, and always preserve the right order of deduction of one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in the end, or to well hidden to be discovered.
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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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He lives well who is well hidden.
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When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.
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Everything is self-evident.
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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I know that I exist; the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.
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For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance.
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The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.
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And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.
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The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
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Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
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For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it.
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Desire awakens only to things that are thought possible.
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Every man is indeed bound to do what he can to promote the good of others, and a man who is of no use to anyone is strictly worthless.
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As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called 'universal mathematics'.