I leave you the best phrases of René Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, considered as the father of analytical geometry and modern philosophy, as well as one of the most prominent names of the Scientific Revolution.
His work, Metaphysical Meditations, continues to be one of the works that is studied the most in the faculties of philosophy. Its influence on mathematics is also notable, highlighting the Cartesian coordinates. You may also be interested in these phrases of famous philosophers, these from Aristotle or these from Plato.
René Descartes is one of the most prominent modern philosophers in history. Source: wikipedia.org
Best Descartes Quotes
-Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to solve it.
-Two things contribute to progress: to go faster than the others or to be on the right track.
-Not being useful to anyone is equivalent to being worthless.
-It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-I would give everything I know for half of what I don't know.
-To be happy, better to modify our desires than to order the world.
-The good we have done gives us an inner satisfaction that is the sweetest of all passions.
-To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.
-Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
- Often a false happiness is worth more than a sadness whose cause is true.
-Bad books create bad habits, but bad habits create good books.
-Except for our own thoughts, there is absolutely nothing in our power.
-Every time someone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that crime cannot reach me.
-Reading all the good books is like a conversation with the best minds of the past centuries.
-The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices, as well as the greatest virtues.
-If you want to be a true seeker of the truth, it is necessary that you doubt at least once in your life, as far as possible, of all things.
- Reason or judgment is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from animals.
-Traveling is almost the same as talking to those of other centuries.
-There is nothing so strange and so incredible that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
-I think, therefore I exist.
-Conquer yourself instead of conquering the world.
-Just keep going. Keep going. I made all the mistakes I could make. But I kept going.
-The senses deceive from time to time, and it is wise not to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.
-Reading a book teaches more than talking to its author, because the author has only put his best thoughts in the book.
-Mathematics is the science of order and measurement, of beautiful chains of reasoning, all simple and easy.
-The existence of God must be considered in my spirit as certain as the truths of mathematics, which do not contemplate anything other than numbers and figures.
-I am used to sleeping and in my dreams imagining the same things that crazy people imagine when they are awake.
-Anything complex can be divided into simple parts.
-An optimist can see a light where there is none, but why should the pessimist always run to turn it off?
-Nothing is distributed more fairly than common sense: nobody thinks they need more than they already have.
- Get rid of all impressions of the senses and imagination, and trust only reason.
-The multitude of laws frequently makes excuses for vices.
-When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we must follow what is most probable.
-Living without philosophizing is actually the same as keeping your eyes closed, without trying to open them.
-The little that I have learned is worthless, compared to what I ignore and do not despair in learning.
-If it is not in our power to discern the best opinions, we must follow the most probable.
-We harbor a multitude of prejudices if we do not decide to doubt some time of all the things in which we find the least suspicion of uncertainty.
-The joy that is born of good is serious, while that that is born of evil is accompanied by laughter and ridicule.
-There is nothing older than the truth.
-There is no soul, no matter how noble, that remains so attached to the objects of the senses that sometimes it does not turn away from them to desire a greater good.
-It would be absurd for us, who are finite, to try to determine infinite things.
- At last I am going to dedicate myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.
-When you spend too much time traveling, you finally become a foreigner in your own country.
-It is enough to judge well to do well, and to judge the best possible to also act in the best way. When you are sure that it is so, you cannot help but be happy.
-There is hardly anything said by one whose opposite is not affirmed.
-My only wish is to know the world and the comedies that are represented in it !.
- Philosophy is what distinguishes us from savages and barbarians; nations are all the more civilized and cultured the better their men philosophize.
-The most generous tend to be the most humble.
-In terms of logic, their syllogisms rather serve to explain things already known to others than to learn.
-The first maxim of every citizen must be to obey the laws and customs of his country, and in all other things to govern himself according to the most moderate opinions and the most remote from excess.
-My goal is not to teach the method that everyone should follow to use their reason well, but only to show how I have tried to use mine well.
-A state is better governed if it has few laws and those laws are carefully observed.
-The perfect numbers as well as the perfect men, are very rare.
"I hope posterity will judge me kindly."
-The first maxim was never to accept something as real until he had known it in such a way that he did not doubt it.
-The illusory happiness is more valid than the real penalty.
-I am actually amazed at how weak my mind can be and how prone to error.
-Each problem that I have solved has become a rule that has helped me to solve the following problems.
-In order to develop the mind, one must first renounce the fact of understanding and then begin to contemplate.
-The two operations of our understanding: intuition and deduction.
-I think I don't even have a sense of being.
- I suppose that in the end all things are an illusion.
-Living well is living without being seen.
-He who hides well, lives well.
-I want to live in peace and continue the life that I started under the motto "live well, live without being seen."
-Masked, I have to advance.
-In my opinion, all things happen mathematically.
-The reason is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists in its totality in each one of us.
-With me, everything becomes math.
-It is better not to go on a great search after the truth, it will only make you feel miserable.
-Those who travel very slowly can make much greater progress, provided that they stay on the straight path, compared to those who abandon it while running.
-The eloquence has incomparable powers and beauty.
-Mathematics has very subtle processes that can serve both to satisfy the inquisitive mind and to help all the arts and reduce the work of man.
-Theology teaches us how to go to heaven.
- Philosophy teaches us to speak with the appearance of truth about things and to make us admire the less educated.
-Law, medicine and other sciences bring honors and riches to those who persecute them.
-When I think simply of God and concentrate only on Him, I do not find any cause of error or lie; But when I think about myself, I realize that I am subject to multiple errors.
-I hope they judge me for all the things that I have explained and also for all the things that I have intentionally omitted, in order to leave others the pleasure of discovering them.
-Everything is evident.
-We must trust the acquisition of knowledge.
-In order to improve the mind, we must learn less and contemplate more.
-It is very easy to hate and it is very difficult to love. That's the way the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve, and bad things are very easy to achieve.
-When I consider this carefully, I do not find a single property that can certainly separate waking from sleep. How can we be sure that our entire life is not a dream?
-If I find new truths in science, I can say that they continue, or that they depend on five or six main problems, which I managed to solve successfully and which I consider as simple battles where the fate of the war was at my side.
-I came to the conclusion that you should take as a general rule the principle that all things that we clearly conceive are obviously true: only by observing, however, there is difficulty in correctly determining the objects that we clearly conceive.
-The great minds, those that are capable of the highest excellence, are open to the greatest aberrations.
-The main effect of the passions is to incite and persuade the mind to want the events for which the body was prepared.
-The long links of simple and easy reasoning that geometricians use to achieve their most difficult proofs, gave me the opportunity to imagine that all matters that can enter the human mind are linked in the same way.
-Nature hates a vacuum.
-The main perfection of man is free will, which is what makes him worthy of praise or censure.
-True wisdom consists in discovering the wisdom of others.
-I don't care if there was another man before me.
-Think before doing something and don't start anything without having fully consulted all the circumstances.
-I will suppose that the body is nothing but a statue or an earth machine that God, on purpose, formed to make it the most similar to us.
-Feeling is nothing more than thinking.
-Because existence belongs to the nature of God, we can perceive it clearly.
-I order my thoughts, starting with the simplest and easiest objects to know, to gradually go up to the knowledge of the most complex things.
- Some say that the monkey is so intelligent that it does not speak so that they do not make it work.
-The best that a State can have is to have true philosophers.
-The trips serve to learn about the customs of other peoples and to put aside the prejudice that only in one's own country is it possible to live in the way one is accustomed to living.
-Being unable to show enthusiasm is a sign of mediocrity.
-Whether asleep or awake, two plus three will always be five, and the square will have no more than four sides.
-It is necessary to take into account that many beliefs are based on prejudice and tradition.
-Better than seeking the truth without a method is never to think about it, since disorderly studies confuse the natural lights of reason and blind intelligence.
-There is no spirit, however stupid and rude, incapable of acquiring the highest virtues if it is guided as necessary.
-The diversity of our opinions does not come from the fact that some are more reasonable than others, but rather that we direct our thoughts in different directions and do not consider the same things.
-It is almost impossible that our judgments are so pure and so solid, as if from the moment of our birth, we had the full use of reason and we had never been directed more than by it.
-The dependency is really a defect.
- All our thoughts cannot be true.
-Admitting false opinions about something is like losing a battle.
-Those who have been good lawyers for a long time will not be better judges afterwards.
-The hope of a good payment will make people do exactly what is asked of them.
-I will not say anything about philosophy, but rather, understanding that it has been worked out by the most relevant sages who have existed for centuries and that, however, there is nothing in it that is still the subject of dispute.
-In physics I would always touch on metaphysical issues.
-The mathematical truths, which are called eternal, have been established by God and totally depend on Him, just like the rest of the individuals.
-I am close to unraveling the chaos to make the light come out, and this is one of the most difficult subjects I can face.