René Descartes Quotes

René Descartes (28)

Birth:	31st March, 1596
Death:	11th February, 1950
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Mathematician, Philosopher, Writer

About

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day.

Related Authors

• Gerard Debreu
• Daniel J. Bernstein
• Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
• G. H. Hardy
• Pierre de Fermat
• Sofia Kovalevskaya
• Eric Temple Bell
• Marston Morse
• George John Boole
• William Kingdon Clifford

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st May

Births

• 1904 - Fats Waller
• 1906 - Harold Robbins
• 1957 - Judge Reinhold
• 1904 - Robert Montgomery
• 1688 - Alexander Pope

Deaths

• 2000 - John Gielgud
• 1920 - Eleanor H. Porter
• 1926 - Ronald Firbank
• 1771 - Christopher Smart
• 1929 - Archibald Philip Primrose

• There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Truth

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Humanity

  Tags in Ethics, Good, Evil, Mind, Choice, Choosing

• Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Century

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Past

  Tags in Like, Reading, Conversation, Book

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rene Descartes, Creativity, Difficulties

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Already, World, Habit, Thinks, Common, Matter

• Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Perfect, Men

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Weak, Consider, Mind

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learn, Improve, Mind

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Enough, Mind

• Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Already, Thinks, Needs, Common

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Soul

  Tags in Try, Reach

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in State, Better, Law

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Mistake

  Tags in Just

• 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.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Discovery, Posterity, Pleasure, Judge

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Dream

  Tags in Accustomed, Am, Lunatics, Awake, Same, Things, Sleep, Imagine

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Confidence

  Tags in Place

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Accept, Until, Single, Thing

• Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

  René Descartes

  Topics in Joy

  Tags in Often, Sorrow

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

  René Descartes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Already, Philosopher, Strange