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
Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride. With it, the knowledge of God creates despair. The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.
The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still.
Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.
To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.
We never love a person, but only qualities.
Not to be mad is another form of madness
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?