Rene Descartes Quotes

I think; therefore I am.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

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

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

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.

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.

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

Masked, I advance.

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. (English: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

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

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 the increasing discovery of my own ignorance

He who hid well, lived well.

Dubium sapientiae initium. (Doubt is the origin of wisdom.)

At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass.

But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.

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 them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true and assured I have gotten either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.

Wow. I'm twenty years old. Rene Descartes invented analytic geometry in his early twenties. Talk about pressure.

In order to determine whether we can know anything with certainty, we first have to doubt everything we know

Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.

There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: 'he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone.' But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes.

The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed it in with confidence.

I was thus led to infer that the ground of our opinions is far more custom and example than any certain knowledge.

And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

La existencia de Dios debe tenerse en mi espíritu por tan cierta como las verdades de las matemáticas que no contemplan otra cosa que números y figuras.

For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance. And

My third maxim was to endeavour always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power;

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method—more daring than anything that the history of philosophy records—of Lobachevsky and Riemann, Gauss and Sylvester. Indeed, mathematics, the indispensable tool of the sciences, defying the senses to follow its splendid flights, is demonstrating today, as it never has been demonstrated before, the supremacy of the pure reason.

I think; therfore I am.

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

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

Who is he?” Eleanor lowered her voice, the name rolling off her tongue like a dark secret. “Dante Berlin.” I laughed. “Dante? Like the Dante who wrote the Inferno? Did he pick that name just to cultivate his ‘dark and mysterious’ persona?” Eleanor shook her head in disapproval. “Just wait till you see him. You won’t be laughing then.” I rolled my eyes. “I bet his real name is something boring like Eugene or Dwayne.” I expected Eleanor to laugh or say something in return, but instead she gave me a concerned look. I ignored it. “He sounds like a snob to me. I bet he’s one of those guys who know they’re good-looking. He probably hasn’t even read the Inferno. It’s easy to pretend you’re smart when you don’t to anyone.” Eleanor still didn’t respond. “Shh . . .” she muttered under her breath. But before I could say “What?” I heard a cough behind me. Oh God, I thought to myself, and slowly turned around. “Hi,” he said with a half grin that seemed to be mocking me. And that’s how I met Dante Berlin. So how do you describe someone who leaves you speechless? He was beautiful. Not Monet beautiful or white sandy beach beautiful or even Grand Canyon beautiful. It was both more overwhelming and more delicate. Like gazing into the night sky and feeling incredibly small in comparison. Like holding a shell in your hand and wondering how nature was able to make something so complex yet to perfect: his eyes, dark and pensive; his messy brown hair tucked behind one ear; his arms, strong and lean beneath the cuffs of his collared shirt. I wanted to say something witty or charming, but all I could muster up was a timid “Hi.” He studied me with what looked like a mix of disgust and curiosity. “You must be Eugene,” I said. “I am.” He smiled, then leaned in and added, “I hope I can trust you to keep my true identity a secret. A name like Eugene could do real damage to my mysterious persona.” I blushed at the sound of my words coming from his lips. He didn’t seem anything like the person Eleanor had described. “And you are—” “Renee,” I interjected. “I was going to say, ‘in my seat,’ but Renee will do.” My face went red. “Oh, right. Sorry.” “Renee like the philosopher Rene Descartes? How esoteric of you. No wonder you think you know everything. You probably picked that name just to cultivate your overly analytical persona.” I glared at him. I knew he was just dishing back my own insults, but it still stung. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” I said curtly, and pushed past him before he could respond, waving a quick good-bye to Eleanor, who looked too stunned to move. I turned and walked to the last row, using all of my self-control to resist looking back.

For these reasons, as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world. I spent the remainder of my youth in traveling, in visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse with men of different dispositions and ranks, in collecting varied experience, in proving myself in the different situations into which fortune threw me,

Rene Descartes, in order to raise skeptical doubts about even our firmest certainties, imagined that we might he under the influence of an evil demon, and more modern philosophers have speculated about the possibility of our being brains in vats.

Ne var ki ben, kendimle ilgili bazı meseleleri hâlâ çözebilmiş değilim. Rendekâr düşünüyor olmasından varolduğu sonucunu çıkarıyor. Ben de düşünüyorum, dolayısıyla varım, ama kimim? ...Hangimiz düş ve hangimiz gerçek? Düşünüyorum, o halde ben varım. Düşünen bir adamı düşünüyorum ve onun, kendisinin düşündüğünü bildiğini düşlüyorum. Bu adam düşünüyor olmasından varolduğu sonucunu çıkarıyor. Ve ben, onun çıkarımının doğru olduğunu biliyorum. Çünkü o, benim düşüm. Varolduğunu böylece haklı olarak ileri süren bu adamın beni düşlediğini düşünüyorum. Öyleyse, gerçek olan biri beni düşlüyor. O gerçek, ben ise bir düş oluyorum.

I watch Fox news for the comedy, MSNBC when I need to be reminded that mind midgets exist and CNN when I want to check out the latest in media lies and special interest propaganda. On the other 364 days of the year I read the American transcendentalists, David Hume, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Niccolo Machiavelli and Diogenes of Sinope.

I think, therefore I am? No, I simply am. I am. I am. I am. I will still be if I didn't think. In fact, it is only then that I would step into a different dimension of consciousness. Yes, I will still be if I didn't think. I will still be if I stopped breathing. I will still be because you still are. My words are written and you are receiving them. We are dancing. We are making love. And when you stop reading them, they will still be because nothing ever truly ceases to exist. There is not a thing that is not. Every thought, energy, and vibration is recycled. I am and I will continue to be because I manifest as the universe, therefore I will continue to manifest as the universe.

Ruhun Tutkunları

Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum' (I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am)

Gustavo Solivellas dice: "Vivir sin filosofar es, propiamente, tener los ojos cerrados, sin tratar de abrirlos jamás" (René Descartes)

...Although the term Existentialism was invented in the 20th century by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, the roots of this thought go back much further in time, so much so, that this subject was mentioned even in the Old Testament. If we take, for example, the Book of Ecclesiastes, especially chapter 5, verses 15-16, we will find a strong existential sentiment there which declares, 'This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind?' The aforementioned book was so controversial that in the distant past there were whole disputes over whether it should be included in the Bible. But if nothing else, this book proves that Existential Thought has always had its place in the centre of human life. However, if we consider recent Existentialism, we can see it was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who launched this movement, particularly with his book Being and Nothingness, in 1943. Nevertheless, Sartre's thought was not a new one in philosophy. In fact, it goes back three hundred years and was first uttered by the French philosopher René Descartes in his 1637 Discours de la Méthode, where he asserts, 'I think, therefore I am' . It was on this Cartesian model of the isolated ego-self that Sartre built his existential consciousness, because for him, Man was brought into this world for no apparent reason and so it cannot be expected that he understand such a piece of absurdity rationally.'' '' Sir, what can you tell us about what Sartre thought regarding the unconscious mind in this respect, please?'' a charming female student sitting in the front row asked, listening keenly to every word he had to say. ''Yes, good question. Going back to Sartre's Being and Nothingness it can be seen that this philosopher shares many ideological concepts with the Neo-Freudian psychoanalysts but at the same time, Sartre was diametrically opposed to one of the fundamental foundations of psychology, which is the human unconscious. This is precisely because if Sartre were to accept the unconscious, the same subject would end up dissolving his entire thesis which revolved around what he understood as being the liberty of Man. This stems from the fact that according to Sartre, if a person accepts the unconscious mind he is also admitting that he can never be free in his choices since these choices are already pre-established inside of him. Therefore, what can clearly be seen in this argument is the fact that apparently, Sartre had no idea about how physics, especially Quantum Mechanics works, even though it was widely known in his time as seen in such works as Heisenberg's The Uncertainty Principle, where science confirmed that first of all, everything is interconnected - the direct opposite of Sartrean existential isolation - and second, that at the subatomic level, everything is undetermined and so there is nothing that is pre-established; all scientific facts that in themselves disprove the Existential Ontology of Sartre and Existentialism itself...

Finding such a duality turns out to be totally logical. Discoveries of the past 100 years have shown that duality is ubiquitous in all the workings of nature. Duality is in no way unique to the potential duality that we seek for the origins of our thoughts. The formal search for a duality of mind/brain goes back at least to the writings of the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes.

Kepler’s discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler—such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal—were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime.

With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.

But so soon as I had achieved the entire course of study at the close of which one is usually received into the ranks of the learned, I entirely changed my opinion. 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 the increasing discovery of my own ignorance. —Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences, 1637

The French Philosopher of the 16th and the 17th Century, Rene Descartes, had said: "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." This is the best way for the public to approach whatever it perceives. The only way to resist to deceit. Education and knowledge can help people be more skeptics, but everyone could start by doubting everything and not believing anything. Even the things that seem too obvious or too reliable. I've noticed a tendency to this direction, but I don't know how broad it is. It has to broaden; for humanity's sake. For truth's sake.

it would be surprising if I had a clearer grasp of things that I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me—·namely, bodies·—than I have of what is true and known— namely my own self. But I see what the trouble is: I keep drifting towards that error because my mind likes to wander freely, refusing to respect the boundaries that truth lays down. Very well, then; I shall let it run free for a while, so that when the time comes to rein it in it won’t be so resistant to being pulled back.

I esteemed Eloquency highly, and was in raptures with poesy; but I thought that both were gifts of nature rather than fruits of study. Those in whom the faculty of Reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of Rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the Art of Poetry.

Modern Westerners are accustomed to conceive of the human compound in a form as simplified and as reduced as possible, since they consist only of two elements, one of which is the body, and the other of which is called indifferently soul or spirit; we say modern Westerners, because, in truth, this dualistic theory has only finally become established since Descartes. We can not undertake to make here a history, even succinct, of the question; we will say only that, previously, the idea that one had of the soul and the body did not include this complete opposition of nature which makes their union really inexplicable, and also that there were, even in the West, conceptions less "simplistic", and closer to those of the Orientals, for whom the human being is a whole much more complex. Moreover, it was far from thinking of this last degree of simplification represented by materialist theories, even more recent than all the others, and according to which man is not even at all a compound, since it is reduced to a single element, the body. Among the old conceptions to which we have just alluded, we would find many, without going back to antiquity, and going only to the Middle Ages, who envisage in man three elements, distinguishing between the soul and the spirit; [...] Vitalism, because it poses the question badly, and because, being in fact only a theory of physiologists, it places itself in a very special point of view, gives rise to a very simple objection. If it is admitted, like Descartes, that the nature of the mind and that of the body have not the least point of contact, then it is not possible that there is between them an intermediary or a middle term; or, on the contrary, we admit, like the ancients, that they have a certain affinity of nature, and then the intermediary becomes useless, for this affinity suffices to explain that one can act on the other.

[...] ou l’on admet, comme Descartes, que la nature de l’esprit et celle du corps n’ont pas le moindre point de contact, et alors il n’est pas possible qu’il y ait entre eux un intermédiaire ou un moyen terme ; ou l’on admet au contraire, comme les anciens, qu’ils ont une certaine affinité de nature, et alors l’intermédiaire devient inutile, car cette affinité suffit à expliquer que l’un puisse agir sur l’autre.

on ne limite pas la Possibilité en niant une absurdité quelconque, par exemple en disant qu’il ne peut exister un carré rond, ou que, parmi tous les mondes possibles, il ne peut y en avoir aucun où deux et deux fassent cinq ; le cas est exactement le même. Il y a des gens qui se font, en cet ordre d’idées, d’étranges scrupules : ainsi Descartes, lorsqu’il attribuait à Dieu la « liberté d’indifférence », par crainte de limiter la toute-puissance divine (expression théologique de la Possibilité universelle), et sans s’apercevoir que cette « liberté d’indifférence », ou le choix en l’absence de toute raison, implique des conditions contradictoires ; nous dirons, pour employer son langage, qu’une absurdité n’est pas telle parce que Dieu l’a voulu arbitrairement, mais que c’est au contraire parce qu’elle est une absurdité que Dieu ne peut pas faire qu’elle soit quelque chose, sans pourtant que cela porte la moindre atteinte à sa toute-puissance, absurdité et impossibilité étant synonymes.

Okay, well, if we were to be created in a video game, as Martin pointed out, and there is a creator who has created us and has full control over us because we are merely holograms or animations, then giving credence to this anti-reality would actually be illogical,” I asserted. “As I mentioned earlier, I had to agree with Rene Descartes and the phrase ‘I think. Therefore, I am.’ We have the ability to think, and if we were holograms in the deterministic anti-reality, then we shouldn’t be able to feel, reason, acquire consciousness, or interpret sensory experience, but we do. Living in a deterministic anti-reality like a video game would make us have no control over how we think, but we do have control over how we think, not the creator, so we are not holograms or animations that are controlled by someone, because we have control over our thoughts.” “But what if the creator controls our thoughts?” Martin asked. “That is more proof that we are not living in a deterministic anti-reality. It really reminds me of how Rene Descartes devised the phrase ‘I think. Therefore, I am.’ He reasoned that if there was a devil who came to cause him to THINK that he exists even when he does not, then for him to be able to think that he exists, he has to henceforth exist. Likewise, if our thoughts were to be controlled by a creator, then that would mean we would exist, because for our thoughts to be controlled, we would have to have the ability to think, but since we think, we would have to have had some kind of control over our thoughts at some point of our lives. Once again, a deterministic anti-reality is where we have no control over ourselves, because we are non-real beings created by someone who lives in reality, but since there is no creator who has full control over our thoughts, then we don’t live in a deterministic anti-reality. The closest thing to our thoughts being ‘controlled’ is a change of opinion, like what might happen after being persuaded, but because we have control over our thoughts while we are thinking, our thoughts are not being controlled; WE are just changing them based on our own freewills.

Rene Descartes tried to explain how he himself was the final source of predication when he said 'Cogito ergo sum.' But soon enough found that he could say nothing about himself except in terms of God and the world which he had first excluded. Mindful of the failure of Descartes, Kant sought for his self-identity by asserting his freedom from all dependence upon the space-time world or of the laws of morality as revealed by God. But then he found that his freedom was merely a negative freedom. As a result he could not find himself. His noumenal realm is free but free is an unintelligible vacuum.

He (Rene Descartes) posited the existence of two parallel yet separate domains of reality: res cogitans, the thinking substance of the subjective mind whose essence is thought, and res extensa, or the extended substance of the material world. Mental stuff and material (including brain) stuff are absolutely distinct, he argued.

Rene Descartes, the famous French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, was born in 1596, in the village of La Haye.

I think; therefore I am.

49 , RENE DESCARTES 1596-1650

His ideas may get corrected and be forgotten with time, but the man must not be.

World-changing architects like Buckminister Fuller and thinkers such as Rene Descartes found that nature provides great inspiration for our building in the physical world. Think Like A Molecule argues that nature and the structure of molecules can inspire our imaginations in the realm of pure ideas — the twinkle of new insights to help us in our thinking and in collaboration with others.

Then, when he has acquired some skill in discovering the truth in these questions, he should commence to apply himself in earnest to true philosophy, of which the first part is Metaphysics, containing the principles of knowledge, among which is the explication of the principal attributes of God, of the immateriality of the soul, and of all the clear and simple notions that are in us; the second is Physics, in which, after finding the true principles of material things, we examine, in general, how the whole universe has been framed; in the next place, we consider, in particular, the nature of the earth, and of all the bodies that are most generally found upon it, as air, water, fire, the loadstone and other minerals. In the next place it is necessary also to examine singly the nature of plants, of animals, and above all of man, in order that we may thereafter be able to discover the other sciences that are useful to us. Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principal, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.