The most famous lines of Descartes's Discourse on the Method
The top 3 according to 5 votes from people: It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well. · The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues · Never to accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such. (Updated Apr 27, 2025.)
'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.
Automatically translated (original in Français). See the original
Top 13
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1
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well.
Part one.
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2
The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues
Part one.
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3
Never to accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such
Part two, the first rule of the method.
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4
Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, that geometers are used to
Part two.
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5
Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world
Part one, first sentence.
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6
Reading all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries
Part one.
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7
When one spends too much time travelling, one ends up a stranger in one's own country
Part one.
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8
One cannot imagine anything so strange or so unbelievable that it has not been said by some philosopher
Part two.
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9
To divide each of the difficulties I examined into as many parts as possible
Part two, the second rule.
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10
Travellers lost in a forest must not wander round in circles, now one way, now another
Part three, the second maxim of the provisional morality.
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11
To try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world
Part three, the third maxim.
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12
I think, therefore I am
Part four.
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13
To make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature
Part six.
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