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
Losses are comparative; imagination only makes them of any moment.
Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
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.
Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
To speak freely of mathematics, I find it the highest exercise of the spirit; but at the same time I know that it is so useless that I make little distinction between a man who is only a mathematician and a common artisan. Also, I call it the most beautiful profession in the world; but it is only a profession;
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.
Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse.