Discourse on Method Quotes

“And thus, the actions of life often not allowing any delay, it is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine the most true opinions we ought to follow the most probable.”
― Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.”
― Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellence, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“I knew that the languages which one learns there are necessary to understand the works of the ancients; and that the delicacy of fiction enlivens the mind; that famous deeds of history ennoble it and, if read with understanding, aid in maturing one's judgment; that the reading of all the great books is like conversing with the best people of earlier times; it is even studied conversation in which the authors show us only the best of their thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable powers and beauties; that poetry has enchanting delicacy and sweetness; that mathematics has very subtle processes which can serve as much to satisfy the inquiring mind as to aid all the arts and diminish man's labor; that treatises on morals contain very useful teachings and exhortations to virtue; that theology teaches us how to go to heaven; that philosophy teaches us to talk with appearance of truth about things, and to make ourselves admired by the less learned; that law, medicine, and the other sciences bring honors and wealth to those who pursue them; and finally, that it is desirable to have examined all of them, even to the most superstitious and false in order to recognize their real worth and avoid being deceived thereby”
― Descartes René 1596-1650, Discourse on Method

“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“...reading good books is like engaging in conversation with the most cultivated minds of past centuries who had composed them, or rather, taking part in a well-conducted dialogue in which such minds reveal to us only the best of their thoughts”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences

“Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune and change my desires rather than changing how things stand in the world.”
― Descartes, Discours de la Méthode

“I had become aware, as early as my college days, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible can be imagined, that has not been held by one of the philosophers.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“...it is not my design to teach the method that everyone must follow in order to use his reason properly, but only to show the way in which I have tried to use my own.”
― Descartes, Discourse on Method

“although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat, without being therefore shut up to the conclusion that a chimaera exists; for it is not a dictate of reason that what we thus see or imagine is in reality existent; but it plainly tells us that all our ideas or notions contain in them some truth.”
― Rene Decartes, Discourse on Method

“The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“The last rule was to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so comprehensive, that I should be certain of omitting nothing.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Those who reason most powerfully and are the most successful at ordering their thoughts so as to make them clear and intelligible will always be best able to persuade others of what they say, even if they speak in the thickest of dialects”
― René Descartes, A Discourse on the Method

“It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be enabled to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything contrary to our customs is ridiculous and irrational, a conclusion usually come to by those whose experience has been limited to their own country.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“those who move but very slowly, may advance much farther, if they always follow the right way; then those who run and straggle from it.”
― René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences

“thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that “I,” that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

“...all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“The majority of men is composed of two classes, for neither of which would this be at all a befitting resolution: in the first place, of those who with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in their judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and circumspect thinking; whence it happens, that if men of this class once take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the beaten highway, they will never be able to thread the byway that would lead them by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and continue to wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world; for everyone believes himself to be so well provided with it that even those who are the hardest to please in every other way do not usually want more of it than they already have.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned,”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

“Those in whom the faculty of reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the art of poetry.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

“But this could not be the case with-the idea of a nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and, because it is not less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of, and dependence on the less perfect, than that something should proceed from nothing, it was equally impossible that I could hold it from myself:”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

“Finally, if there be still persons who are not sufficiently persuaded of the existence of God and of the soul, by the reasons I have adduced, I am desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain;”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method