Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes
René Descarteswas a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. He spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic...
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth31 March 1596
CityIndre-et-Loire, France
desire
Desire awakens only to things that are thought possible.
love dream waking
When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
desire littles matter
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.
music moving delight
The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.
strange philosopher said
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
aries
Nothing comes out of nothing.
peaceful solitude mind
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.
years numbers childhood
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.
thinking long deceiving
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.
dream sleep waking
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.
deceived-us prudent deceiving
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.
memories lying believe
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.
discovery statistics available
Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
respect thinking common-sense
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.