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
There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.
That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.
The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.
I take it as a matter not to be disputed, that if all knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This seems proved by the quarrels and disputes caused by the disclosures which are occasionally made.
It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.
Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
From whence comes it that a cripple in body does not irritate us, and that a crippled mind enrages us? It is because a cripple sees that we go right, and a distorted mind says that it is we who go astray. But for that we should have more pity and less rage.
To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.
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.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself. [Fr., Voulez-vous qu'on croie du bien de vous? N'en dites point.]