Rene Descartes Quotes

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

At the time, my grandparents told my mom, "Lordy, what is Shannen doing?" Now I've calmed down. [on her reputation for bad behavior]

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.

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 afterwards to solve other problems.

Everything is self-evident.

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

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

I think; therefore I am.

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.

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

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

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

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

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

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

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.