I leave you 50 Phrases from René Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, regarded as the father of analytic geometry and modern philosophy, as well as one of the most prominent names in the scientific revolution.
Before, did you know these curiosities?
- Due to the precarious health that had had since childhood, Rene Descartes had to spend countless hours in bed. He used to think about philosophy, math, to ramble and even allowed himself to waste time thinking about the shrews.
- He died in Sweden, after spending several days getting up at 5 in the morning to teach the queen.
- Descartes' body remained in Sweden for 16 years. When, finally, his mortal remains arrived in France, claimed by his admirers and friends, the coffin was opened and the skull was found to be missing. Already in the nineteenth century, the Swedish chemist Berzelius indicated in a letter to the paleontologist Cuvier that he had the skull of Descartes. The skull was sent to France, but it did not join the rest of the body of Descartes but it went to stop to the Musée de L'Homme in Paris.
- Despite his religious orthodoxy, the works of Descartes ended in the Index of prohibited books Of the Catholic Church.
- Descartes could be the victim of a murder by a possible intellectual-religious plot in Sweden. Theodor Ebert quotes the Queen's Spiritual Adviser as the philosopher's poisoned intellectual and alleged materialist.
The best quotes from Descartes
1-Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to solve it.
2-Conquer yourself instead of the world.
3-Two things contribute to progress: go faster than others, or go the right way.
4-Not being useful to anyone is worth nothing.
5-It is not enough to have a good mind; The main thing is to use it well.
6-I would give everything I know for half of what I do not know.
7-To be happy, better to modify our desires than the ordination of the world.
8-The good we have done gives us an inner satisfaction that is the sweetest of all passions.
9-To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than to what they say.
10-Keep pushing. Keep pushing. I made all the mistakes that I could make. But I kept pushing.
11-Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
12-Often a false joy is worth more than a sadness whose cause is true.
13-Bad books generate bad habits, but bad habits generate good books.
14-Except for our own thoughts, there is absolutely nothing in our power.
15-Whenever someone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that crime can not reach me.
16-The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the best minds of the past centuries.
17-The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices, as well as of the greatest virtues.
18-If you want to be a true seeker of truth, you need to hesitate at least once in your life, as far as possible, of all things.
19-I think, therefore I am.
20-Mathematics is the science of order and measure, of beautiful chains of reasoning, all simple and easy.
21-There is hardly anything said by one whose opposite is not affirmed.
22-The existence of God must be held in my spirit as true as the truths of mathematics which see nothing but numbers and figures.
23-The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent not to rely entirely on those who have deceived us even once.
24-Reading a book teaches more than talking to its author, because the author, in the book, has only put his best thoughts.
25-Reason or judgment is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from animals.
26-Traveling is almost the same as talking to those of other centuries.
27-There is nothing so strange and so incredible that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
28-I am used to sleeping and in my dreams imagine the same things that the crazy ones imagine when they are awake.
29-Everything complex can be divided into simple parts.
30-An optimist can see a light where there is not, but why should the pessimist always run to turn it off?
31-Nothing is distributed more justly than common sense: no one thinks he needs more than he already has.
32-Let go of all the impressions of the senses and of the imagination, and rest only on reason.
33-The multitude of laws often makes excuses for vices.
34-When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we must follow what is most probable.
35-Living without philosophizing is really the same as keeping your eyes closed, without trying to open them.
36-The little that I have learned is worthless, compared to what I do not know and I do not despair at learning.
37-If it is not in our power to discern the best opinions, we must follow the most probable ones.
38. We harbor a multitude of prejudices if we do not decide to ever doubt all the things in which we find the slightest suspicion of uncertainty.
39-The joy born of good is serious, while that which is born of evil is accompanied by laughter and mockery.
40-There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
41. There is no soul, no matter how noble it may be, to remain so attached to the objects of the senses that sometimes it does not depart from them to desire a greater good.
It would be absurd for us, who are finite, to try to determine infinite things.
43-I am finally going to dedicate myself wholeheartedly and unreservedly to the general demolition of my opinions.
44-When one takes too much time to travel, he eventually becomes a foreigner in his own country.
45-It is enough to judge well to do well, and judge the best possible to work also in the best way. When you are sure you are, you can not help being happy.
46-There is hardly anything said by one whose opposite is not affirmed.
"My only desire is to know the world and the comedies that are represented in it!"
48. Philosophy is what distinguishes us from savages and barbarians; Nations are all the more civilized and cultured the better their men philosophize.
49. The most generous tend to be the most humble.
As far as logic is concerned, its syllogisms serve to explain things already known to others, rather than to learn.
51. The first maxim of every citizen must be to obey the laws and customs of his country, and in all other things to be governed according to the most moderate opinions and far removed from excess.
52-My goal is not to teach the method that everyone should follow to use their reason well, but only to show how I have tried to use mine well.
53. Common sense is the most justly distributed thing in the world.
54. A state is better governed if it has few laws and those laws are meticulously observed.
55. Perfect numbers as well as perfect men are very few.
56. I hope that posterity will judge me kindly.
The first maxim was never to accept something as real until he had known it in such a way that he did not doubt it.
58. The illusory happiness is more valid than the real penalty.
59. I am in fact astonished at how weak my mind can become and how prone it is to error.
60- Every problem that I have resolved has become a rule that has helped me to solve the following problems.
61. In order to develop the mind, one must first renounce the act of understanding and then begin to contemplate.
62. The two operations of our understanding: intuition and deduction.
63- I think that I do not even have a sense of being.
"I suppose in the end all things are an illusion.
Living well is living without being seen.
I doubt, therefore I think, therefore therefore I am.
67- Keep struggling, you just have to keep trying. I have made all the mistakes that could be made and yet I have never ceased to strive.
But in my humble opinion, all things in the world occur mathematically.
69 He who hides well, lives well.
70. When we escape from our hands hold on to what is true, we must seek refuge in that which is probable.
"I suppose, therefore, that all things I see are illusions; I believe that there has been nothing of everything that my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that the body, the form, the extension, the movement and the location are functions. What then can be taken as truth? Maybe just one thing, that nothing is true.
72- I want to live in peace and continue the life that I started under the motto"live well, live without being seen".
Masked, I must advance.
And I found myself ashamed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct me had no effect except the growing discovery of my own ignorance
But in my opinion, all things occur mathematically.
76- Because reason... is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists in its totality in each one of us.
77- That anyone who can do it deceives me, will never let him know that I am nothing, as long as I continue to believe that I am something.
"With me, everything becomes mathematics.
But I can not forget that on other occasions the dream has deceived me with similar illusions; And, looking carefully at these cases, I perceive with such clarity that there are no certain marks by which the waking state can ever be distinguished from the dream, which I feel very astonished; And with astonishment I almost persuaded myself that I am dreaming now.
A few years ago I was struck by the great number of falsehoods I had accepted as true in my childhood and by the highly dubious nature of the whole edifice I had subsequently built in them.
I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations if I wanted to establish something in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.
So blind is the curiosity that mortals are possessed, that they often lead their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to expect success, but simply being willing to take the risk of experimenting with finding it. Truly seeking is there.
"It's best not to start off on a great quest behind the truth, it will only make you feel miserable.
The diversity of our opinions, therefore, does not arise from the fact that some are endowed with a greater proportion of reason than others, but only from this, that we direct our thoughts in different ways and do not focus our attention on the same objects .
85. Those who travel very slowly can make much greater progress as long as they remain on the right path, compared with those who, while running, abandon it.
I am what he thinks: that is, that which doubts, affirms, denies, understands some things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is not willing, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.
I knew that the languages one learns are necessary to understand the works of the ancients; And that the delicacy of fiction animates the mind, which the famous facts of history ennoble and, if read with understanding, help to mature the judgment.
88. Eloquence has incomparable powers and beauty.
Mathematics has very subtle processes that can serve both to satisfy the inquisitive mind and to aid all arts and to diminish the work of man.
Theology teaches us how to go to heaven.
Philosophy teaches us to speak with the appearance of truth about things, and to make us admire for the least educated.
92. Law, medicine, and other sciences bring honors and riches to those who persecute them.
"It is my wish to have examined all, even the most superstitious and false, in order to recognize their real value and to avoid being deceived by them.
94. This result could have been achieved by"God"endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything I would ever deliberate, or simply by imprinting the following rule so firmly on my memory that I could never forget it: Understand clearly and distinctly.
Where do my mistakes come from? They come from the one fact that, since the will is much broader in scope and compass than the understanding, I do not restrict it within the same limits, but also extend it to the things I do not understand: and as the will is Indifferent to them, easily falls into error and sin, and chooses evil for good, or false for true.
96. When I turn the eye of my mind to myself, I understand that I am an incomplete thing that depends on another and which aspires without limits to become a day into a great thing.
"By"God"I mean, a substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created me as much as myself and everything else that exists.
All these attributes are such that the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. Therefore, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.
I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath or something I can imagine.
And, finally, of the false sciences I thought I knew enough to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of Those who profess.