René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind

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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
The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

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
Human wisdom... always remains one and the same, however applied to different subjects, and suffers no more differentiation proceeding from them than the light of the sun experiences from the variety of things which it illumines..

René Descartes
We have sufficient evidence that the ancient Geometricians made use of a certain analysis which they extended to the resolution of all problems, though they grudged the secret to posterity.

René Descartes
The two operations of our understanding...[are] intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

René Descartes
Method consists entirely in the order and disposition of the objects towards which our mental vision must be directed if we would find out any truth.

René Descartes
We must believe that all the sciences are so interconnected, that it is much easier to study them all together than to isolate one from all the others. If, therefore, anyone wishes to search out the truth of things in serious earnest, he ought not to select one special science; for all the sciences are cojoined with each other and interdependent..

René Descartes
But as I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to Mathematics in which order and measurement are investigated, and it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other objects that the question of measurement arises.

René Descartes