René Descartes quotes

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, often called the "father of modern philosophy." His method of doubt and the statement "I think, therefore I am" have had a profound impact on Western thought. He laid the foundations for analytic geometry and significantly influenced the development of modern science. Here are 93 of his quotes:

I think, therefore I am.

René Descartes

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

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.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

René Descartes

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.

René Descartes

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen.

René Descartes

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.

René Descartes

He who hid well, lived well.

René Descartes

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

René Descartes

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

René Descartes