Rene Descartes Quotes

"Traveling is almost like talking with those of other centuries."

"I will proceed by setting aside all that in which the least doubt could be imagined, just as if I had discovered that it was completely false."

"The joy of the soul constitutes the chief good of this life."

"Hope is the desire of the soul to be convinced that the dream will come true."

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

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

"Nothing is more ancient than the truth."

"Those who walk slowly can, if they follow the right path, go much further than those who run and go astray."

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

"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed."

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

"I think, therefore I am."

"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."

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

"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."

"Conquer yourself rather than the world."

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

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

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

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

"I am a thing that thinks: that is to say, that doubts, affirms, denies, that knows a few things, that is ignorant of many, that loves, that hates, that wills, that desires, that also imagines and perceives."

"Wonder is the first of all the passions."

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

"Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The principal effect of all the passions in men is that they incite and dispose their souls to desire those things for which they prepare their bodies."

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