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 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.

MK-BOOKS-DESCARTES.
UPDATED-20070829.