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
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.
The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.
Who can doubt that we exist only to love? Disguise it, in fact, as we will, we love without intermission... We live not a moment exempt from its influence.
This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.
Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.
To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.
And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?
Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.
If all persons knew what they said of each other there would not be four friends in the world
Love has its reasons that Reason knows not
Le coeur a ses raisons dont le cerveau ne sait nul. T: 'The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.'
Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies.
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous.