Descartes, René (René Descartes)

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
-- René Descartes

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- René Descartes

Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess.
-- René Descartes

Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.
-- René Descartes

Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes out of nothing.
-- René Descartes

Dubium sapientiae initium. Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
-- René Descartes

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
-- René Descartes

Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.
-- René Descartes

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
-- René Descartes

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
-- René Descartes

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
-- René Descartes

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
-- René Descartes

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
-- René Descartes

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
-- René Descartes

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.
-- René Descartes

Everything is self-evident.
-- René Descartes

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
-- René Descartes

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
-- René Descartes

I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.
-- René 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.
-- René Descartes

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.
-- René Descartes

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.
-- René 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.
-- René 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.
-- René Descartes

It is a mark of prudence never to trust wholly in those things which have once deceived us.
-- René Descartes

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
-- René Descartes

In order to improve the mind, we ought less learn than to contemplate.
-- René Descartes

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
-- René Descartes

It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.
-- René Descartes

Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt. With me everything turns into mathematics.
-- René Descartes

The long concatenations of simple and easy reasoning which geometricians use in achieving their most difficult demonstrations gave me occasion to imagine that all matters which may enter the human mind were interrelated in the same fashion.
-- René 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.
-- René Descartes

The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
-- René Descartes

To do is to be.
-- René Descartes

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
-- René Descartes

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
-- René Descartes

When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
-- René Descartes

When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
-- René Descartes

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.
-- René Descartes

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
-- René Descartes

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
-- René Descartes

It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- René Descartes

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