Literary Birthday – 31 March – René Descartes

René Descartes was born on 31 March 1596 and died on 11 February 1650.

René Descartes Quotes

1. The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
2. The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
3. When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
4. Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
5. One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
6. I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am.
7. 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.
8. It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
9. Doubt is the origin of wisdom.
10. To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer. He is called  the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy’. Most Western philosophy is a response to his writings. Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes set his views apart from earlier philosophers. In the opening of the Passions of the Soul, a modern treatise on emotions, Descartes declares that he will write on this topic ‘as if no one had written on these matters before’. His best-known philosophical statement is ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’). He is also credited as the father of analytic geometry, which facilitated the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis.

by Amanda Patterson

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