Rene descartes quotes

But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.

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.

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.

The mind effortlessly and automatically takes in new ideas, which remain in limbo until verified or rejected by conscious, rational analysis.

In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.

The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.

And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.

My third maxim was to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, so that after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything in which we do not succeed is for us absolutely impossible.

I know that I exist; the question is, What is this 'I' that 'I' know.

We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.

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

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

Reason is nothing without imagination.

How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?

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.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

It is best not to go on for great quest for truth , it will only make you miserable

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

De omnibus dubitandum

Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.

In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought; for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.

How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

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

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.

For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it.

I think; therefore I am.

It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false.

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.

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

Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them.

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

We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived, and so by that word we do not signify what we understand about a thing, but rather what we do not understand.

He lives well who is well hidden.

...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.

There is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it.

But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

Although my knowledge grows more and more, nevertheless I do not for that reason believe that it can ever be actually infinite, since it can never reach a point so high that it will be unable to attain any greater increase.

All is to be doubted.

Truths are more likely to be discovered by one man than by a nation

And as it is the most generous souls who have most gratitude, it is those who have most pride, and who are most base and infirm, who most allow themselves to be carried away by anger and hatred.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

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.

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.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.

At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.

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.

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 that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.

Now therefore, that my mind is free from all cares, and that I have obtained for myself assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall apply myself seriously and freely to the general destruction of all my former opinions.

Few look for truth; many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.

On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.

I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

Everything is self-evident.

There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.

Desire awakens only to things that are thought possible.

Wonder is the first of all the passions.

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.

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am

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

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

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.

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.

Archimedes, that he might transport the entire globe ... demanded only a point that was firm and immovable; so also, I shall be entitled to entertain the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable.

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.

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

He who hid well, lived well.

Nothing comes out of nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction.

Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.

Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.

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?

Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.

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.

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?

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

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."

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

Instead I ought to be grateful to Him who never owed me anything for having been so generous to me, rather than think that He deprived me of those things or has taken away from me whatever He did not give me.

What then is the source of my errors? They are owing simply to the fact that, since the will extends further than the intellect, I do not contain the will within the same boundaries; rather, I also extend it to things I do not understand. Because the will is indifferent in regard to such matters, it easily turns away from the true and the good; and in this way I am deceived and I sin.

Science is practical philosophy.

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.

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

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.

A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.

I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen

God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.

Neither the true nor the false roots are always real; sometimes they are imaginary; that is, while we can always imagine as many roots for each equation as I have assigned, yet there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root we have imagined.

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

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.

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.

The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.

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.

The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.

The only secure knowledge is that I exist.

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.

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.

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

We never understand a thing so well,and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.

Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.

The only thing that I know, is that I know nothing

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.

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.

Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom.

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

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.

... regard this body as a machine which, having been made by the hand of God, is incomparably better ordered than any machine that can be devised by man, and contains in itself movements more wonderful than those in any machine. ... it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

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

Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.