Rene Descartes Quotes on Knowledge
Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy gave modern epistemology its founding statement. The method of doubt sets aside every belief that admits of even hyperbolic skeptical challenge — the senses, mathematics, the external world — until the meditator arrives at the indubitable cogito: I think, therefore I am. From this Archimedean point Descartes attempts to reconstruct knowledge of God, the external world, and the mind-body distinction through clear and distinct perception, framing the rationalist program that Spinoza and Leibniz would extend.
Quotes
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“I think, therefore I am.”
Je pense, donc je suis. -
Attributed to Rene Descartes:
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
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Attributed to Rene Descartes:
“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
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“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.”
In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things. -
Attributed to Rene Descartes:
“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.”
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Attributed to Rene Descartes:
“There is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it.”
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“No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise , among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. ...I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.”
Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel , Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003) -
“No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise , among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the ”
Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel , Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003) -
“M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind , and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.”
Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori , A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch -
“Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations ... in order to present them to the queen of the land . ...If I had only been as wise as they say the savages persuaded themselves that the monkeys were, I never would have become known as a maker of books: Since it is said that they imagined that the monkeys could indeed speak, if they wanted to, but that they chose not ”
Letter to Pierre Chanut (Nov. 1, 1646) as quoted by Amir Aczel , Descartes' Secret Notebook (2005) citing René Descartes: Correspondance avec Elizabeth et autres lettres (1989) ed., Jean-Marie and M. Beysaade, pp. 245-246. -
“Me tenant comme je suis, un pied dans un pays et l'autre en un autre, je trouve ma condition très heureuse, en ce qu'elle est libre.”
Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free. | Letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (Paris, June/July 1648)