The line comes from a 1944 existentialist play by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called Huis Clos, or No Exit. No, this does not mean other people are the worst and you should hide yourself in a dark, lonely room so that you don't have to put up with them. 'For Descartes,' says Rugnetta, 'the cogito is a first order of knowledge,' which means all other knowledge is premised upon the fact that there is a knower to know stuff. What he means is thinking requires a thinker - which seems pretty self-evident - and the fact that a thought is thought proves the existence of that thinker. He's not saying, 'If you think it, you can be it!' Nor is he claiming that if you have thoughts, you must therefore have a physical brain and body. This statement by French philosopher René Descartes - mostly commonly translated from the Latin as 'I think, therefore I am' - is sometimes taken as a motivational, believe-in-yourself bit of pop psychology. These are three of the most quoted statements in the history of philosophy but, as Mike Rugnetta of PBS's Idea Channel notes, they're just as frequently misinterpreted.

'Cogito ergo sum.' 'Hell is other people.' 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

Hell is Others for apple instal