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René Descartes
16 quotes
“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.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1634 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by , Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003)
“What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1637 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes (1925)
“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.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1638 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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…
“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.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1648 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (Paris, June/July 1648)
“So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rules for the Direction of the Mind in Key Philosophical Writings (1997), pp. 29-30
“Mais apud me omnia fiunt Mathematicè in Natura”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1640 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sources: Correspondence with Mersenne note for line 7 (1640), page 36, Die Wiener Zeit page 532 (2008); StackExchange Math Q/A Where did Descartes write...
“Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée : car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu, que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose, n'ont point coutume d'en désirer plus qu'ils en ont.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1637 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discours de la méthode René Descartes Gallimard 1991 Folio essais 1637 75 1 }} == w:Les Principes de la philosophie = [[File:Principia philosophiae.tif thumb Principia philosophiae, 1685 == Les Passions de l'âme, 1649 =…
“Je pense, donc je suis.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I should like you to consider that these functions (including passion, memory, and imagination) follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counter-weights and wheels.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Descartes, Rene, L'Homme (The Treatise on Man) (1662) p. 108
“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 to so lest they be forced to work. And since I had not the same prudence to abstain from writing, I now have neither as much liesure nor as much peace as I would have had if I had kept quiet. But since the mistake has already been made, and since I am now known by an infinity of people at the academy, who look askance at my writings and scour them for means of harming me, I do have great hope of being known to persons of great merit, whose power and virtue could protect me.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) first seen 1646 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to (Nov. 1, 1646) as quoted by , Descartes' Secret Notebook (2005) citing René Descartes: Correspondance avec Elizabeth et autres lettres (1989) ed., Jean-Marie and M. Beysaade, pp. 245-246.
“Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth. But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I could give here several other ways of tracing and conceiving a series of curved lines, each curve more complex than any preceding one, but I think the best way to group together all such curves and them classify them in order, is by recognizing the fact that all points of those curves which we may call "geometric," that is, those which admit of precise and exact measurement, must bear a definite relation to all points of a straight line, and that this relation must be expressed by a single equation. If this equation contains no term of higher degree than the rectangle of two unknown quantities, or the square of one, the curve belongs to the first and simplest class, which contains only the circle, the parabola, the hyperbola, and the ellipse; but when the equation contains one or more terms of the third or fourth degree in one or both of the two unknown quantities (for it requires two unknown quantities to express the relation between two points) the curve belongs to the second class; and if the equation contains a term of the fifth or sixth degree in either or both of the unknown quantities the curve belongs to the third class, and so on indefinitely.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) said by 1650 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source