Top 100 René Descartes Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.”

— René Descartes

52. “There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it.”

— René Descartes

53. “There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.”

— René Descartes

54. “Few look for truth; many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.”

— René Descartes

55. “Truths are more likely to be discovered by one man than by a nation.”

— René Descartes

56. “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.”

— René Descartes

57. “The only secure knowledge is that I exist.”

— René Descartes

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

— René Descartes

59. “The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all.”

— René Descartes

60. “I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.”

— René Descartes

61. “Now therefore, that my mind is free from all cares, and that I have obtained for myself assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall apply myself seriously and freely to the general destruction of all my former opinions.”

— René Descartes

62. “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.”

— René Descartes

63. “Every man is indeed bound to do what he can to promote the good of others, and a man who is of no use to anyone is strictly worthless.”

— René Descartes

64. “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

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

— René Descartes

66. “Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.”

— René Descartes

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

— René Descartes

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

— René Descartes

69. “There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.”

— René Descartes

70. “I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.”

— René Descartes

71. “Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.”

— René Descartes

72. “Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.”

— René Descartes

73. “Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

— René Descartes

74. “A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.”

— René Descartes

75. “And thus, the actions of life often not allowing any delay, it is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine the most true opinions we ought to follow the most probable.”

— René Descartes

76. “For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance.”

— René Descartes

77. “So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.”

— René Descartes

78. “Human wisdom remains always one and the same although applied to the most diverse objects and it is no more changed by their diversity than the sunshine is changed by the variety of objects which it illuminates.”

— René Descartes

79. “Although my knowledge grows more and more, nevertheless I do not for that reason believe that it can ever be actually infinite, since it can never reach a point so high that it will be unable to attain any greater increase.”

— René Descartes

80. “The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.”

— René Descartes

81. “It’s the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: “I don’t really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.””

— René Descartes

82. “Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.”

— René Descartes

83. “Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.”

— René Descartes

84. “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.”

— René Descartes

85. “It is best not to go on for great quest for truth, it will only make you miserable.”

— René Descartes

86. “For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it.”

— René Descartes

87. “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

88. “And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.”

— René Descartes

89. “But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.”

— René Descartes

90. “When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.”

— René Descartes

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

— René Descartes

92. “It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.”

— René Descartes

93. “The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body.”

— René Descartes

94. “For each of us there is a set limit to our intellectual powers which we cannot pass.”

— René Descartes

95. “And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.”

— René Descartes

96. “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

97. “Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.”

— René Descartes

98. “I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.”

— René Descartes

99. “If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.”

— René Descartes

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

— René Descartes