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Your Quotes for 31 March 2006 - 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. Descartes was among the first of the modern philosophers, his works were of profound influence on European thought for several centuries. He also developed significant parts of geometry. 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.

Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

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

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
     - All from René Descartes, 1596 - 1650

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