A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
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.
Rene Descartes

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
Rene Descartes

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
Rene Descartes

Everything is self-evident.
Rene Descartes

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
Rene Descartes

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

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

I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
Rene Descartes


I think; therefore I am.
Rene Descartes

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.
Rene Descartes

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
Rene Descartes

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Rene Descartes

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes

It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.
Rene Descartes

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
Rene Descartes

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
Rene Descartes

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
Rene Descartes