List of Rene Descartes Quotes

I Concluded That I Might Take As A General Rule The Principle That All Things Which We Very Clearly And Obviously Conceive Are True: Only Observing, However, That There Is Some Difficulty In Rightly Determining The Objects Which We Distinctly Conceive.

Here I Beg You To Observe In Passing That The Scruples That Prevented Ancient Writers From Using Arithmetical Terms In Geometry, And Which Can Only Be A Consequence Of Their Inability To Perceive Clearly The Relation Between These Two Subjects, Introduced Much Obscurity And Confusion Into Their Explanations.

It Must Not Be Thought That It Is Ever Possible To Reach The Interior Earth By Any Perseverance In Mining: Both Because The Exterior Earth Is Too Thick, In Comparison With Human Strength; And Especially Because Of The Intermediate Waters, Which Would Gush Forth With Greater Impetus, The Deeper The Place In Which Their Veins Were First Opened; And Which Would Drown All Miners.

The Nature Of Matter, Or Body Considered In General, Consists Not In Its Being Something Which Is Hard Or Heavy Or Coloured, Or Which Affects The Senses In Any Way, But Simply In Its Being Something Which Is Extended In Length, Breadth And Depth.

It Is Contrary To Reasoning To Say That There Is A Vacuum Or Space In Which There Is Absolutely Nothing.

The Entire Method Consists In The Order And Arrangement Of The Things To Which The Mind's Eye Must Turn So That We Can Discover Some Truth.

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.

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.

It Is To The Body Alone That We Should Attribute Everything That Can Be Observed In Us To Oppose Our Reason.

The Rainbow Is Such A Remarkable Phenomenon Of Nature, And Its Cause Has Been So Meticulously Sought After By Inquiring Minds Throughout The Ages, That I Could Not Choose A More Appropriate Subject For Demonstrating How, With The Method I Am Using, We Can Arrive At Knowledge Not Possessed At All By Those Whose Writings Are Available To Us.

I Accept No Principles Of Physics Which Are Not Also Accepted In Mathematics.

Even The Mind Depends So Much On Temperament And The Disposition Of One's Bodily Organs That, If It Is Possible To Find A Way To Make People Generally More Wise And More Skilful Than They Have Been In The Past, I Believe That We Should Look For It In Medicine. It Is True That Medicine As It Is Currently Practiced Contains Little Of Much Use.