"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing"
About this Quote
Descartes is the poster figure for certainty, yet his actual project begins in controlled collapse: doubt everything, strip away inherited authorities, admit how easily the intellect confuses itself. In that light, "I made every mistake that could be made" isn’t confession so much as calibration. He’s naming fallibility as a feature of inquiry, not a moral failure. The subtext is almost anti-heroic: if the mind is a machine prone to bad inputs, progress isn’t purity, it’s iteration.
The cadence matters. The sentence refuses ornament because it’s not trying to persuade an audience so much as discipline the self. Repetition becomes a metronome: keep the tempo when the experiment goes wrong, when the proof collapses, when the metaphysics start to feel like scaffolding. That’s a mathematician’s spirituality - less epiphany than persistence under constraint.
Contextually, it also sneaks in a quiet rebuke to the era’s scholastic certainty. Descartes didn’t win by being right the first time; he won by treating wrong turns as data. The "push" is the method: forward motion against error, habit, and the seductions of premature certainty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Never Give Up |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: 100 Great Quotes by René Descartes (Farhad Hemmatkhah Kalibar) modern compilationID: ey8FEQAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... truth, it will only make you miserable.” René Descartes “You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.” René Descartes " If you would be a real seeker after truth. 51. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Descartes, Rene. (2026, February 12). You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-just-keep-pushing-you-just-keep-pushing-i-9876/
Chicago Style
Descartes, Rene. "You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing." FixQuotes. February 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-just-keep-pushing-you-just-keep-pushing-i-9876/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing." FixQuotes, 12 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-just-keep-pushing-you-just-keep-pushing-i-9876/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.








