Rene Descartes Quotes

Unless we take care to clear the first principles of knowledge from the incumbrance and delusion of words, we may make infinite reasonings upon them to no purpose. We may deduce consequences, and never be the wiser.

It is certainly true that principles cannot be more securely founded than on experience and consciously clear thinking.

Principle I: Legal rights are presumptive rights.

[A]lthough the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.

No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.

The person determined to achieve maximum success learns the principle that progress is made one step at a time.

If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.

No one fights with more principle and passion than Michael Gove.

Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might: Guid faith, he maunna fa' that.

The person is only a phenomenon, the principle is behind it. Thus from both sides, simultaneously, we find the breaking down of personalities and the approach towards principles, the Personal God approaching the Impersonal, the personal man approaching the Impersonal Man.

You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life.

Lifting where we stand is a principle of power. Most of the priesthood bearers I know understand and live by this principle. They are eager to roll up their sleeves and go to work, whatever that work might be.

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason.

We ought to be respecting the principle of equality.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

Courage is the ability to do the right thing, all the time, no matter how painful or uncomfortable it might be.

Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it contains no truths.

How often have we seen politicians take a principle position only to give it up three days later? That is what makes democracy so fascinating.

...from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.

When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle.