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
Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.
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.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.
Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.