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René Descartes

5 free books by René Descartes. 4 you can read right here.

Born 1596 in Descartes · Died 1650 in Stockholm

writer · France · associated with rationalism

Notable works: Discourse on the Method, La Géométrie, The Description of the Human Body

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Facts from Wikidata (Q9191), retrieved 2026-09-26.

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Quotes from René Descartes’s books

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Discourse on Method

From Project Gutenberg e-text #25830 (public domain in the USA).

And perceiving that this Truth, I think, therefore, I am, was so firm and certain, that all the most extravagant suppositions of the Scepticks was not able to shake it, I judg'd that I might receive it without scruple for the first principle of the Philosophy I sought.

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I knew then that I was a substance, whose whole essence or nature is, but to think, and who to be, hath need of no place, nor depends on any materiall thing.

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Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences

From Project Gutenberg e-text #59 (public domain in the USA).

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.

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