Rene Descartes
RENÉ DESCARTES   Macroknow Library
   

   
Discourse on the Method.

" . . . [A] multiplicity of laws often furnishes excuses for vice . . ."1a LAO-TZU NEW TESTAMENT

"I think, therefore I am."1b* BHAGAVAD GITA PLOTINUS AUGUSTINE HEGEL HUSSERL BUBER


     
   

Meditations.

"Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us."2a AL-GHAZALI BRENTANO

" . . . [W]ether I am awake or sleeping, two and three added together always make five, and a square never has more than four sides; and it does not seem possible that truths so apparent can be suspected of any falsity or uncertainty."2b ARISTOTLE PASCAL BERKELEY VOLTAIRE JAMES SANTAYANA RUSSELL POPPER ORWELL DRUCKER PENROSE

"I recognize that it is impossible that [God] should ever deceive me, since in all fraud and deceit is to be found a certain imperfection; and although it may seem that to be able to deceive is a mark of subtlety or power, yet the desire to deceive bears evidence without doubt of weakness or malice, and, accordingly, cannot be found in God."2c PLATO LOCKE RUSSELL


   

* Italics in the original.

1 René Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
a Discourse 2, at 40.
b Discourse 4, at 53.

2 René Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
a First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at 96.
b First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at 98.
c Fourth Meditation: Of Truth and Error, at 132-133.

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