Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Blaise Pascal. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( pask-AL, also UK: -AHL, PASK-əl, -al, US: pah-SKAHL; French: [blɛz paskal]; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, writer and Catholic theologian.
He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest mathematical work was on conic sections; he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16. He later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines), establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator.
He also worked in the natural and applied sciences, where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. The latter contains Pascal's Wager, known in the original as the Discourse on the Machine, a probabilistic argument for God's existence. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Throughout his life, Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18; he died just two months after his 39th birthday.
Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.
Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere.
Contradiction is a bad sign of truth; several things which are certain are contradicted; several things which are false pass without contradiction. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth.
If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself.
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature and the thing which pleases us.
Longer Version:
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
Opinion is the queen of the world.
Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.
The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.
Our notion of symmetry is derived from the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breath only, not vertically nor in depth.
The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals.
We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.
The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.
Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety. (Page 1).
Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.
Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.
Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.
Brave deeds are wasted when hidden.
Continuity in everything is unpleasant.
There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.
It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.
If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.
Continued eloquence is wearisome.
It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.
God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.
Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
The self is hateful.
Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.
Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.
No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.
The more intelligence one has, the more people one finds original. Commonplace people see no difference between men.
Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.
I made this letter very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.
Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China?
The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.
It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
Longer Version:
To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.
The stream is always purer at its source.
Longer Version:
The stream is always purer at its source.
Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source.
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.
All the good maxims which are in the world fail when applied to one's self.
Miracle does not always signify miracle.
Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.
The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.
Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?
Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.
Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.
Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.
Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.
The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from
another than from himself at different times.
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
Why God has instituted Prayer:-- To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.
Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God.
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.
There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.
If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God.
The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.
Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.
Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.
The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no
true demonstrations.
How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?
The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.
Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.
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