René Descartes citáty

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„Ak by ste boli skutočným hľadačom pravdy, je potrebné, aby ste aspoň raz v živote pochybovali, pokiaľ je možné, o všetkom.“

„Myslím; teda som.“

„Nestačí mať dobrý rozum. Najdôležitejšie je správne ho používať.“

„Najväčšie mysle sú schopné najväčších nerestí, ako aj najväčších cností.“

„Každú ťažkosť rozdeľte na toľko častí, koľko je možné a potrebné na jej vyriešenie.“

„Dokonalosť ženy je na hony vzdialená jej kráse.“

„Krása žien sa nám páči práve preto, že má svoje kazy.“

„Dal by som všetko, čo viem, za polovicu toho čo neviem.“

„Iba tých pokladám za svojich priateľov, ktorí sú takí smelí, že ma upozornia na moje chyby.“

„Poznávanie pravdy je zdravie ľudského ducha.“

„Buďme krajne podozrievaví voči takým výrokom našich priateľov, ktoré sú nám po chuti.“

„Pochybujem teda myslím, myslím, teda som.“

„Nemáme žiadnu hodnotu, ak nie sme nikomu užitoční.“

„Nestačí mať dobrý úmysel, je potrebné mať aj správne uvažovanie.“

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.”

“Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.”

“It is best not to go on for great quest for truth, it will only make you miserable”

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.”
Cogito, ergo sum.

“No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. …I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.”

“Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth.
But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.”

“Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.”

“So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.”

“No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. … This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature … without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.”

“What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.”

“With me, everything turns into mathematics.
More closely translated as: but in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.”
Mais apud me omnia fiunt Mathematicè in Natura

“I could give here several other ways of tracing and conceiving a series of curved lines, each curve more complex than any preceding one, but I think the best way to group together all such curves and them classify them in order, is by recognizing the fact that all points of those curves which we may call "geometric," that is, those which admit of precise and exact measurement, must bear a definite relation to all points of a straight line, and that this relation must be expressed by a single equation. If this equation contains no term of higher degree than the rectangle of two unknown quantities, or the square of one, the curve belongs to the first and simplest class, which contains only the circle, the parabola, the hyperbola, and the ellipse; but when the equation contains one or more terms of the third or fourth degree in one or both of the two unknown quantities (for it requires two unknown quantities to express the relation between two points) the curve belongs to the second class; and if the equation contains a term of the fifth or sixth degree in either or both of the unknown quantities the curve belongs to the third class, and so on indefinitely.”

“M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature… You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.”

“Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences”