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
How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.
It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
Undoubtedly equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men has made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might--so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good.
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.
In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.
Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
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.