Best René Descartes Quotes
René Descartes Quotes About God, Truth, Mind, Philosophy, Mathematics & Life! René Descartes was a French philosopher and mathematician. He was Born on March 31, 1596, in Touraine, France. He began attending ‘Jesuit College Royal Henry-LeGrand in La Fleche’ at eight. After graduating from the University of Poitiers in 1616, he went on to get a Bachelor of Laws degree in line with his father’s expectations. From a young age, Descartes has shown a remarkable talent for mathematics. In his last year of high school, his mathematical abilities had already been fine-tuned to the point that even the principal was amused by one of his homework problems.
After returning from the Netherlands, Descartes spent much of his time in Paris and on European travels. Numerous writings by Descartes were published, including “The Meteors,” “Geometry,” “Dioptrics,” and “Discourse on the Method,” among others. Meditations on the First Philosophy was published in 1641, did follow by Principles of Philosophy in 1644.
Many of today’s philosophical ideas are derived from Descartes’ writings, making him the “father of modern philosophy.” All university philosophy departments teach his writings as part of their curriculum. As a result of his work, he has been regarded as the “Father of Analytical geometry.” His analytical geometry research was crucial to developing infinitesimal calculus and analysis.
Descartes introduced using x, y, and z to represent unknown numbers and a, b, and c to represent known numbers in equations. The traditional notation for exponents, which is the use of superscripts, was developed by him. In addition, he was the creator of the Descartes Law, now more popularly known as Snell’s Law. Descartes passed away on February 11, 1650, when he was 53.
Best René Descartes Quotes
1. “To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.”-René Descartes
2. “There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.”-René Descartes
3. “In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”-René Descartes
4. “Truths will be discovered by an individual rather than a whole people.”-René Descartes
5. “The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”-René Descartes
6. “One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.”-René Descartes
7. “We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.”-René Descartes
8. “Because reason is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.”-René Descartes
9. “To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.”-René Descartes
10. “It is in the nature of our mind to construct general propositions on the basis of our knowledge of particular ones.”-René Descartes
11. “Our convictions result from custom and example very much more than from any knowledge that is certain.”-René Descartes
12. “There is nothing more ancient than the truth.”-René Descartes
13. “When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”-René Descartes
14. “An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”-René Descartes
15. “I could not possibly be of such a nature as I am, and yet have in my mind the idea of a God, if God did not in reality exist.”-René Descartes
16. “‘God’ created both myself and everything else.”-René Descartes
17. “By ‘God’, I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful.”-René Descartes
18. “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”-René Descartes
19. “When I was examining what I was, I realized that I could pretend that I had no body… but I could not pretend in the same way that I did not exist.”-René Descartes
20. “With me, everything turns into mathematics.”-René Descartes
21. “I paid special attention to Arithmetic and Geometry.”-René Descartes
22. “But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.”-René Descartes
23. “The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.”-René Descartes
24. “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.”-René Descartes
25. “These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demonstrations had led me to fancy that everything that can fall under human knowledge forms a similar sequence.”-René Descartes
26. “Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.”-René Descartes
27. “Among all those who up to this time made discoveries in the sciences, it was the mathematicians alone who had been able to arrive at demonstrations.”-René Descartes
28. “For me, everything in nature is mathematics.”-René Descartes
29. “If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal, we could from that alone deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members.”-René Descartes
30. “Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.”-René Descartes
