Rene Descartes quotes

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”

— Rene Descartes

“Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.”

— Rene Descartes

“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.”

— Rene Descartes

“I think; therefore I am.”

— Rene Descartes

“You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.”

— Rene Descartes

“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.”

— Rene Descartes

“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”

— Rene Descartes

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

— Rene Descartes

“A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.”

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

“Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.”

— Rene Descartes

“Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.”

— Rene Descartes

“I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.”

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes

“Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.”

— Rene Descartes

“When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”

— Rene Descartes

“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”

— Rene Descartes

“Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.”

— Rene Descartes

“In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.”

— Rene Descartes

“The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.”

— Rene Descartes

“There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.”

— Rene Descartes

“I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.”

— Rene Descartes

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

— Rene Descartes