Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascalwas a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was 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. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth19 June 1623
CityClermont-Ferrand, France
CountryFrance
Law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable.
Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.
The God of the infinite is the God of the infinitesimal.
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.
The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.
The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.
The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.
Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.
No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king ... unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.