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Sciences contained in books, (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations), composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.

— René Descartes

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More quotes by René Descartes

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

Principles of Philosophy (1644)

I was not, thank heaven, in a condition which compelled me to make merchandise of Science for the bettering of my fortune.

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.

Le Homme (The Treatise on Man) (1662)

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

Key Philosophical Writings (1997)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: René Descartes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.