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Quotes of the Day for 31 March 2005 - Descartes

René Descartes was born at La Haye, France on this day in 1596. At age ten he was sent to a Jesuit college at Anjou where he was allowed to sleep late due to poor health, a habit he continued throughout his life and asserted that his best thinking depended on it. He is called the father of modern philosophy, his works were of profound influence on European thought for the next several centuries. He also developed significant parts of geometry. He attempted to extend mathematical certainty to philosophy. His undoing may have been a change in schedule: He was summoned to teach Queen Christina of Sweden philosophy but the lessons were scheduled for five in the morning and he died of pneumonia within a few months.

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.

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum. (I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am.)

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
     - All from René Descartes, 1596 - 1650

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