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01Undated
I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance. Multiplicity of laws often furnishes excuses for evil doing. Sometimes is very difficult to untangle the truth. By the name God I understand a substance that is infinite [eternal, immutable], independent, all knowing, all powerful, and by which I myself and everything else, if anything else exist, have been created. We can conceive nothing that is extended as being so small as not to be capable of being divided, in thought at least. The present time has no causal dependence on the time immediately preceding it. Our errors are defects of our mode of auction, but not of our nature; and that the faults of subordinates may often be attributed to other masters, but never to God. The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it. If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things. .
René Descartes / quote
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07Undated
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.
René Descartes / quote
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