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René Descartes
René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) Philosopher and Mathematician ; also known as Cartesius
Sourced
- Cogito, ergo sum.
- Translation from Latin: I think, therefore I am.
- Variant: I think therefore I exist.
- Principia philosophiae
- Ex nihilo nihil fit.
- Translation: Nothing comes out of nothing.
- Principia philosophiae
- Dubium sapientiae initium.
- Translation: Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
- Meditationes de prima philosophiae
Le Discours de la Méthode (1637)
The Discourse on Method
- Je pense, donc je suis.
- Translation from French: I think, therefore I am.
- It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
- 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.
- Variants: 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.
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.
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
- One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
- Variant: There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
- The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
- The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
Attributed
- An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
- Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
- Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
- 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.
- Everything is self-evident.
- Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
- I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
- I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- Variant: If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- It is a mark of prudence never to trust wholly in those things which have once deceived us.
- Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
- In order to improve the mind, we ought less learn than to contemplate.** In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
- 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.
- It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.
- Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
- With me everything turns into mathematics.
- Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
- 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.
- Variant: The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
- The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
- To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
- Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
- 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?
- When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
- Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
- When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.
- Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
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