Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Rene Descartes
9,109

I think; therefore I am.

Rene Descartes
9,108
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. -Rene Descartes
9,104

. . .to be useful to no one is, strictly speaking, to be worthless.

Rene Descartes
9,054

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

Rene Descartes
9,018
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. -Rene Descartes
5,401

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

Rene Descartes
5,394

I know not if I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or if I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

Rene Descartes
5,370
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out? -Rene Descartes
5,368

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

Rene Descartes
5,367

The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

Rene Descartes
5,359
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt. -Rene Descartes
5,351

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.

Rene Descartes
5,350

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

Rene Descartes
5,345
Without doubt one always looks more carefully at what one believes must be seen by many than at what one does only for oneself, and often the things that have seemed to me to be true when I began to concieve them have appeared false to me when I wanted to put them on paper. -Rene Descartes
5,340

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

Rene Descartes
5,339

Cogito ergo sum. (I think; therefore I am.)

Rene Descartes
5,328
It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived. -Rene Descartes
5,321

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.

Rene Descartes
5,319

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

Rene Descartes
5,301
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. -Rene Descartes
5,274