Brilliant Thoughts of Descartes

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

• "I think, therefore I am."

• "Conquer yourself rather than the world"

• "Doubt is the origin of wisdom."

• "How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?"

• "If you want to be a real seeker of the truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible of all things."

• "To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them."

• "The only thing we have power in the universe is our own thoughts."

• " Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every person is convinced that they are well supplied with it."

• "All is to be doubted."

• "Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul."

• "Wonder is the first of all the passions."

• "Variant - when it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is the most probable."

• " We call infinite that thing whose limits we have not perceived."

• "It is the most generous souls who have most gratitude; it is those who have most pride, most base and infirm, who most allow themselves to be carried away by anger and hatred."

• "So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked."

• "Few look for truth, many prowls about a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best."

• "In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate."

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

• "Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled your tears." 

• "I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error."

• "The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all."

- René Descartes
French philosopher,
 mathematician
 and scientist