Quotes by Rene Descartes

About Rene Descartes:

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Whence then come my errors? They come from the sole fact that since the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but extend it also to things which I do not understand: and as th...

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

I think; therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Rene Descartes

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.

Rene Descartes

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

Rene Descartes

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

Rene Descartes

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

Rene Descartes

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.

Rene Descartes

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

that the grace of fable stirs the mind"...and..."that the perusal of excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages

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.

Rene Descartes

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

Rene Descartes

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 th...

Rene Descartes

Author Bio

  • NameRene Descartes
  • DescriptionFrench philosopher
  • AliasesDescartes; Rene Descartes
  • BornMarch 31, 1596
  • DiedFebruary 11, 1650
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Mathematician; Musicologist; Physicist; Astronomer; Writer; Music Theorist; Actor