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
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter
We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.
Sleep, you say, is the image of death; for my part I say that it is rather the image of life.
Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.
What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything
And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?
The most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason
Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies.
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed