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
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 Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
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.
You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.
At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.
The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.
It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.
An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
It is not possible to have reasonable grounds for not believing in miracles.
It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.