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Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations... in order to present them to the queen of the land. ...If I had only b… - René Descartes
" "Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations... in order to present them to the queen of the land. ...If I had only been as wise as they say the savages persuaded themselves that the monkeys were, I never would have become known as a maker of books: Since it is said that they imagined that the monkeys could indeed speak, if they wanted to, but that they chose not to so lest they be forced to work. And since I had not the same prudence to abstain from writing, I now have neither as much liesure nor as much peace as I would have had if I had kept quiet. But since the mistake has already been made, and since I am now known by an infinity of people at the academy, who look askance at my writings and scour them for means of harming me, I do have great hope of being known to persons of great merit, whose power and virtue could protect me.
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About René Descartes
René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650) was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, physicist and writer. He is known for his influential arguments for substance dualism, where mind and body are considered to have distinct essences, one being characterized by thought, the other by spatial extension. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and the "Father of Modern Mathematics." He is also known as Cartesius.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Descartes
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Cartesius
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Renatus Cartesius
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Additional quotes by René Descartes
while I wanted thus to think that everything was false, it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something. And noticing that this truth — I think, therefore I am — was so firm and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.
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To begin with, I see that it is impossible that God should ever deceive me. Only someone who has something wrong with him will engage in trickery or deception. That someone is able to deceive others may be a sign of his skill or power, but his wanting to deceive them is a sign of his malice or weakness; and those are not to be found in God. Next, I know from experience that I have a faculty of judgment; and this, like everything else I have, was given to me by God. Since God doesn’t want to deceive me, I am sure that he didn’t give me a faculty of judgment that would lead me into error while I was using it correctly.
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