Quotes by René Descartes

“I think therefore I am. ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.”

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

“I think therefore I am.”

“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.”

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

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

“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, extens...”

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

“I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen”

“Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.”

“although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined...”

“Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on th...”