Few look for truth; many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.
It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.
Nothing comes out of nothing.
Science is practical philosophy.
And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.
I have concluded the evident existence of God, and that my existence depends entirely on God in all the moments of my life, that I do not think that the human spirit may know anything with greater evidence and certitude.
I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put – I think, therefore I am.
Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.
Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
It is best not to go on for great quest for truth, it will only make you miserable.
In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought; for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.
Instead I ought to be grateful to Him who never owed me anything for having been so generous to me, rather than think that He deprived me of those things or has taken away from me whatever He did not give me.
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
Conquer yourself rather than the world.
Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.