Rene Descartes Quotes

Science is not wisdom.

We are not responding to this instant if we are judging any aspect of it.

Many complain of their memory, few of their judgment.

To see with one's own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one has seen and felt in a snappy sentence or even in a cunningly wrought word - is that not glorious? Is it not a proper subject for congregation?

God's providence is on the side of clear heads.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character.

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.

Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.

A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.

We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at.

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

Thoughts are like stars in the firmament; some are fixed, others like the wandering planets, others again are only like meteors. Understanding is like the Sun, which gives light to all the thoughts. Memory is like the Moon, it hath its new, its full and its wane.

The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It's evidence of a lack of understanding.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

One must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision...No discussion, cooperation, agreement, or understanding is possible among men who substitute emotion for proof.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

Literary people are forever judging the quality of the mind by the turn of expression.

It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.