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
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.
The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.
According to the doctrine of chance, you ought to put yourself to the trouble of searching for the truth; for if you die without worshiping the True Cause, you are lost. "But," say you, "if He had wished me to worship Him, He would have left me signs of His will." He has done so; but you neglect them. Seek them, therefore; it is well worth it.
The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
The most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason
This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge.
What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything
Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.