31st March: Rene Descartes

This date in 1596 saw the birth of Rene Descartes. 10 pearls of wisdom from him:

1. The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
2. It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
3. Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
4. The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.
5. Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
6. An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
7. Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
8. The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
9. Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offence cannot reach it.
10. One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.