Rene Descartes

2025-12-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

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?

Fifth Meditation

2014-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

And thus I very clearly see that the certitude and truth of all science depends on the knowledge alone of the true God, insomuch that, before I knew him, I could have no perfect knowledge of any other thing.

And now that I know him, I possess the means of acquiring a perfect knowledge respecting innumerable matters, as well relative to God himself and other intellectual objects as to corporeal nature, in so far as it is the object of pure mathematics which do not consider whether it exists or not.

Rene Descartes

2010-01-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

I think ... therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

2010-01-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

Rene Descartes

2010-01-03T18:30:00.001-08:00

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Rene Descartes

2010-01-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able, and not to adhere less steadfastly to the most doubtful opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain, imitating in this the example of travelers who, when they have lost their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side to side, far less remain in one place, but proceed constantly towards the same side in as straight a line as possible, without changing their direction for slight reasons, although perhaps it might be chance alone which at first determined the selection, for in this way, if they do not exactly reach the point they desire, they will come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest.

In the same way, since in action it frequently happens that no delay is permissible, it is very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to act according to what is most probable, and even although we should not remark a greater probability in one opinion than in another, we ought not withstanding to choose one or the other, and after wards consider it, in so far as it relates to practice, as no longer dubious, but manifestly true and certain, since the reason by which our choice has been determined is itself possessed of these qualities.

This principle was sufficient thenceforward to rid me of all those repenting and pangs of remorse that usually disturb the consciences of such feeble and uncertain minds as, destitute of any clear and determinate principle of choice, allow themselves one day to adopt a course of action as the best, which they abandon the next, as the opposite.

When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to act according to what is most probable.

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

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