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
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.
All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal
We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.
The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.
We make an idol of truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and an idol that we must not love or worship.
The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.