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
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.
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.
Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.
The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.
We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.
There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.