Rene Descartes Quotes

Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man's vision.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.

Seeing is not always believing.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

Maybe—just maybe—Sadie had my best interests at heart. (I just caught her making faces at me, so maybe not.)

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.

All our knowledge begins with the senses...

To hear is to doubt, to see is to be deceived, but to feel is to believe.

She wants to believe my excuses so bad. Every time I lie, she wants to believe me so much.

All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.

I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.

The ancient saying, "There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses," and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.

Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women.

Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke.

He [said of one or other eminent colleagues] is a very busy man, and half of what he publishes is true, but I don't know which half.

That's your first mistake. Do not trust me.

Nothing in this world is real

Many people believe everything others say, even though what they see with their own eyes, should be enough to tell them otherwise.

Who you gonna believe-me or your lying eyes?

Matter is real to my senses, but they aren't trustworthy. If Galileo or Copernicus had accepted what they saw, they would never have discovered the movement of the earth and planets.