Rene Descartes

I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

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.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

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

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

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

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

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.

There is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it.

Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.

In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.

The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all.

In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought; for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

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.

Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

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