René Descartes Quotes

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Making... a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with.

René Descartes
What is there, then, that can be esteemed true? Perhaps this only, that there is absolutely nothing certain.

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
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 the increasing discovery of my own ignorance.

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

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

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
Conversing with those of past centuries is much the same as travelling.

René Descartes
Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

René Descartes
To read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which these authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts.

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

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
I suppose the body to be just a statue or a machine made of earth.

René Descartes
At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving, which is nothing else than thinking. From this I begin to know what I am with somewhat greater clearness and distinctness than heretofore.

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.

René Descartes
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.

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

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

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
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.

René Descartes
The last rule was to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, that I should be certain of omitting nothing.

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

René Descartes