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
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
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.
Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.
All of our dignity consists in thought. Let us endeavor then to think well; this is the principle of morality.
I would inquire of reasonable persons whether this principle: Matter is naturally wholly incapable of thought, and this other: I think, therefore I am, are in fact the same in the mind of Descartes, and in that of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before.
Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.