Meditations on First Philosophy Quotes

“For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to...”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:lifefaithsatisfaction

“All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I have learned either from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to...”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:truth

“It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:truthbelief

“And this same knowledge extends likewise to all other things which I recollect having formerly demonstrated, such as the truths of geometry and the like; for what can be alleged against them to cause me to place them in doubt?”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:knowledgedoubt

“It is certain that I no less find the idea of God, that is to say, the idea of a supremely perfect Being, in me, than that of any figure or number whatever it is;”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:God

“I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that...”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:soulexistencebody

“But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels.”

― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

topic:thinkingdoubtexistence