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 never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
All of our dignity consists in thought. Let us endeavor then to think well; this is the principle of morality.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
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.
Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed