Rene Descartes Quotations

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

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

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

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

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.

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

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

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

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

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

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum.(I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)

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.

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even that those who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger meas

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.

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 rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.

Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom.

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

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.

It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.

For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false rather than those others which we experience when awake, since the former are often not less vivid and distinct than the latter?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.

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

Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.

The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.

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.

I think; therefore I am.

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

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.

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.

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.

Desire awakens only to things that are thought possible.

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?

Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.

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

Nothing comes out of nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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."

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.

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.

For each of us there is a set limit to our intellectual powers which we cannot pass.

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.

It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.

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.

Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.

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