224 Quotes by Rene Descartes

Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.

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

In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth.

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

How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?

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

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

If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.

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