René Descartes

"Descartes at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy"

"So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experi…"

"M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolve…"

"In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things."

"Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other…"

"I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us."

"René Descartes is more widely known as a philosopher than as a mathematician, although his philosophy has been controverted while his mathematics has not. ...In accordance with the ideals of his age, …"

"The implications of Descartes' analytic reformulation of geometry are obvious. Not only did the new method make possible a systematic investigation of known curves, but, what is of infinitely greater …"