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
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.
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.
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself?
Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.
For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.
I am in the utmost perplexity, yand have wished a hundred times, that if there is a A God, nature would manifest him without ambiguity, and that if there is not, every imaginary sign of his existence might vanish : in short, let nature speak distinctly, or be totally silent, and I shall know what course to take.
We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.
We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.