Quotes About Philosophy

For there is hardly any question in the sciences about which clever men have not frequently disagreed. But whenever two persons make opposite judgements about the same thing, it is certain that at least one of them is mistaken, and neither, it seems, has knowledge. For if the reasoning of one of them were certain and evident, he would be able to lay it before the other in such a way as eventually to convince his intellect as well.

I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed it in with confidence.

I will follow this strategy until I discover something that is certain or, at least, until I discover that it is certain only that nothing is certain.

On the other hand, I compared the disquisitions of the ancient moralists to very towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud:

I am, I exist.

It is enough that I can understand one thing, clearly and distinctly, without another in order to be certain that one thing is distinct from the other.

it appears to me that I have discovered many truths more useful and more important than all I had before learned, or even had expected to learn.

Is there anything more intimate or more internal than pain?

If I find some reason for doubt in each of my beliefs, that will be enough to reject all of them.

Je puis me persuader d'avoir été fait tel par la nature que je puisse aisément me tromper même dans les choses que je crois comprendre avec le plus d'évidence et de certitude.

Therefore from the fact alone that I know that I exist and that, at the same time, I notice absolutely nothing else that belongs to my nature apart from the single fact that I am a thinking thing, I correctly conclude that my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing.

I am thinking, therefore I exist.

One needs to know what thought is, what existence is and what certainty is.

we ought also to consider as false all that is doubtful.

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

the greater objective (representative) perfection there is in our idea of a thing, the greater also must be the perfection of its cause.

they who make pretensions to philosophy are often less wise and reasonable than others who never applied themselves to the study

while I wanted thus to think that everything was false, it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something. And noticing that this truth—I think, therefore I am—was so firm and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.

But, because I had already very clearly recognized in myself that the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal

For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance. And

I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that " I," that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.

Con frecuencia una falsa alegría vale más que una tristeza cuya causa es verdadera.

About Pierre de Fermat] It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things, in order to be able to deduce from them general rules, which might be applicable elsewhere.