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
The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.
Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.
Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth
Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.
Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.
Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.
Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image.
Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity,. envisioned an age of "universal education and sustenance of all humanity". "The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."
The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.
When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. ...such community of intellect that we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.
The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.
Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.