René Descartes (80+ Sourced Quotes)

88 Sourced Quotes

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 translation: The seeker after truth must, once in the course of his life, doubt everything, as far as is possible.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

The mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in medicine they must be sought for.

René Descartes

In truth, the most important thing for curing illnesses and maintaining health is good humor and joy.

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

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

Science is like a woman: if she stays faithful to her husband she is respected; if she becomes common property she grows to be despised.

René Descartes

We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived, and so by that word we do not signify what we understand about a thing, but rather what we do not understand.

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

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

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

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

My third maxim was to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, so that after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything in which we do not succeed is for us absolutely impossible.

René Descartes

The sciences are now masked, but when the masks are lifted, they will be seen in their beauty. Upon inspecting the chain of the sciences, it will not appear more difficult to remember them than a series of numbers.

René Descartes

Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminishes freedom.

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

But there is I know not what being, who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. So that... this proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.

René Descartes

M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.

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

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

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

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

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René Descartes

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Born: March 31, 1596

Died: February 11, 1650 (aged 53)

Bio: René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day.

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