I think; therefore I am

1. A statement by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. “I think; therefore I am” was the end of the search Descartes conducted for a statement that could not be doubted. He found that he could not doubt that he himself existed, as he was the one doing the doubting in the first place. In Latin (the language in which Descartes wrote), the phrase is “Cogito, ergo sum.”

Example Sentences

In the 17th century, René Descartes connected the idea of the self to consciousness when he famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.”

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Let’s give the last word, plus one of mine, to the famous phrase of French philosopher and scientist Rene Descartes: “Cogito ergo sum ridens” — “I think, therefore I am laughing.”

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Around the same time that Rene Descartes was saying "I think therefore I am", the Catholic church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei "vehemently suspect of heresy" for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.

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An early effort came in the 17th century, by the French philosopher René Descartes who said: "I think therefore I am."

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Literature and philosophy love pithy phrases such as “I think, therefore I am” from Frenchman René Descartes.

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