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
That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]
The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.
The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.
[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.
Le nez de Cle opa" tre: s'il e u" t e te plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.
What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.
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.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.