# The most famous lines of Descartes's Discourse on the Method

'Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world', 'I think, therefore I am', 'masters and possessors of nature': the most quoted lines of Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637), checked against the text, with the part they come from.

- 5 votes · 13 items
- Apr 27, 2025 · Noémie Faure
- https://even.best/en/l/4694/the-most-famous-lines-of-descartes-s-discourse-on-the-method

## Top 13

1. **It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Part one.
2. **The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Part one.
3. **Never to accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Part two, the first rule of the method.
4. **Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, that geometers are used to** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Part two.
5. **Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part one, first sentence.
6. **Reading all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part one.
7. **When one spends too much time travelling, one ends up a stranger in one's own country** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part one.
8. **One cannot imagine anything so strange or so unbelievable that it has not been said by some philosopher** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part two.
9. **To divide each of the difficulties I examined into as many parts as possible** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part two, the second rule.
10. **Travellers lost in a forest must not wander round in circles, now one way, now another** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part three, the second maxim of the provisional morality.
11. **To try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part three, the third maxim.
12. **I think, therefore I am** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Part four.
13. **To make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Part six.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.