René Descartes - Reason Quotes

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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.

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

René Descartes
Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am—I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true: I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind, understanding, or reason,—terms whose signification was before unknown to me.

René Descartes
No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge.... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.

René Descartes
I believe that all those to whom God has given the use of reason are bound to use it mainly to know Him and to know themselves. This is where I endeavored to begin my own research, and I can say that I would have been unable to find the foundation of physics had I not sought after them in this way In William R. Shea

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes
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.

René Descartes