224 Quotes by Rene Descartes

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

The dreams we imagine when we are asleep should not in any way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have when we are awake.

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

Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)

Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?

La lecture de tous les bons livres est comme une conversation avec les plus honnêtes gens des siècles passés.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

When I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things...

entre plusieurs opinions également reçues, je ne choisissais que les plus modérées, tant à cause que ce sont toujours les plus commodes pour la pratique, et vraisemblablement les meilleures, tous excès ayant coutume d'être mauvais, comme aussi afin de me détourner moins du vrai chemin, en cas que je faillisse, que si, ayant choisi l'un des extrêmes, c'eût été l'autre qu'il fallu suivre. (3e partie, para 2)