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
Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.
The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.
...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.
If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.
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.
Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.
Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.
Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.
I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.
Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.