Quotessence
Home / Authors / Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal Quotes

Mathematician

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsReasonKnowsDoeHeartThinkingMindBelieveWorldShouldMathematicalPeopleSoulTruthMathMathematicsHumansGivingMankind

Famous Blaise Pascal Quotes

“There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.”

MindBelieveMeanDoeReasonInspirationFaithThreeForceChristianitySonAuthorityInstitutionsProofContraryRationalFormerLatterCustoms
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.”

IfsGivingDoeRealCharacterWould BeQualityOpinionEvidenceMarkErrorsQueensFancyFalsehoodDeceivingInfallibleDeceitful
Book:Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
Create image

“Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.”

KnowsMenWayDoeSelfConsciousnessTreeGreatnessProveMiseryMiserableMonarchs
Book:Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects
Create image

“The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.”

MenNeedsGivingFeelsMindDoeReasonEnoughEarthWonderCircumstancesEarsIndependentIllNoiseReportsTriflesCannonsGreatest Man
Book:Thoughts on religion, and other subjects
Create image

“Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.”

IfsMenHumansDoeSaidLife IsPassionSpeakIllusionEndureAbsenceDeceptionHuman LifeDeceitSpokesMutualSincerityPerpetualDeceivingFlatteryHuman Society
Book:Pascal's Pensees
Create image

“All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.”

MenMindBelieveDoeArtMadeCareHeardJudgingConversationUnderstoodCapacityExcellenceRidiculousSpotsPausesRemarksPenetratePlungeIncomparableArt Of Conversation
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.”

KnowsMenDoeEndsCoursesJesusChristMiddleHe ManPrideProudDespairApproachJesus ChristMiseryHumbleKnowing God
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”

PeopleMenMeanDoeStatesWholeLightDiesUniverseLostLeftSleepKnowingAtheismDespairWake UpBlindMovedAtheistTerrorCornersDesertIslandsIncapableWretchedSurveys
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.”

PeopleWorldFeelsMeanDoeYoungNoiseVanityVainBoredIntrospectionRecognizingWretchedExtinctionDiversion
Book:Human Happiness
Create image

“We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.”

KnowsWellsKindMayDoeGodScienceChangeNumbersKnowledgeKnowingInfiniteOddInfinityUnitsFiniteUntrueFinite Number
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.”

IfsDoeWholeFallSpaceVirtueGreatnessOppositesExtremesAdmireExcessDisplayFillingBenevolenceSpace BetweenAscentExtremityValourFilling Up
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image