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
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.
Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.
The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
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.
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.