René Descartes - Discourse on the Method (1637)

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

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

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

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

René Descartes
Those long chains of reasoning, simple and easy as they are, of which geometricians make use in order to arrive at the most difficult demonstrations, had caused me to imagine that all those things which fall under the cognizance of man might very likely be mutually related in the same fashion.

René Descartes
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?

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

René Descartes
The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things, to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another.

René Descartes
If we consider all external goods as equally beyond our power, we shall no more regret the absence of such goods...

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

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

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

René Descartes
But if there were machines bearing the image of our bodies, and capable of imitating our actions as far as it is morally possible, there would still remain two most certain tests whereby to know that they were not therefore really men.

René Descartes