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
Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.
If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . .
The eternal Being is forever if he is at all.
When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate.
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.
I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.
We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.