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
Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.
Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.
All of our dignity consists in thought. Let us endeavor then to think well; this is the principle of morality.
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference...
The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
We are troubled only by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves.
Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.