Pascal Quotes

It is not the length of years but a multitude of generations that makes things obscure. For truth is only perverted when men change. ~ Blaise Pascal

Jesus Christ and St Paul possess the order of charity, not of the mind, for they wished to humble, not to teach. ~ Blaise Pascal

We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between. ~ Blaise Pascal

Wisdom leads us back to childhood. Except ye become as little children. ~ Blaise Pascal

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything. ~ Blaise Pascal

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? ~ Blaise Pascal

I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries. ~ Blaise Pascal

St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents. ~ Blaise Pascal

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world. ~ Blaise Pascal

The documents were in English - sort of - but the language was so convoluted that it was beginning to give her a headache. It made for even duller reading than her chemistry text. ~ Francine Pascal

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is
the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being. ~ Blaise Pascal

All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly. ~ Blaise Pascal

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist. ~ Blaise Pascal

Each of us is several, is man, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. ~ Pascal Mercier

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness. ~ Blaise Pascal

One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person. ~ Blaise Pascal

When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Amusement allures and deceives us and leads us down imperceptibly in thoughtlessness to the grave ~ Blaise Pascal

I am a Christian which means that I believe in the deity of Christ, like Tycho de Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal ... like all great astronomers mathematicians of the past. ~ Augustin-Louis Cauchy

It is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; [47] so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false. ~ Blaise Pascal

All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling. ~ Blaise Pascal

Great and small suffer the same mishaps. ~ Blaise Pascal

The people with the most fear have the greatest opportunity to be brave. ~ Francine Pascal

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature. ~ Blaise Pascal

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves. ~ Blaise Pascal

Worrying about what does not yet exist, is that a gesture of love or the worst kind of argument putting pressure on the living, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. [...] How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend it to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. We can receive no pardon for our errors, since those who would be in a position to grant it have not yet been born! A vicious circle: isn't sacrificing people today for the benefit of those to come also a way of penalizing the latter [...]? ~ Pascal Bruckner

Victims becoming torturers is such a classic historical pattern that we could formulate, regarding any revolution whatever, this iron law : combat oppression; beware of the oppressed. ~ Pascal Bruckner

Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering. ~ Blaise Pascal

Christianity is strange: it requires human beings to recognize that they are vile and even abominable. ~ Blaise Pascal

What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ~ Pascal Mercier

May God never abandon me. ~ Blaise Pascal

At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ. ~ Blaise Pascal

As good heirs of the Bible, we think that a great misfortune necessarily follows a great infraction. In this respect the intellectual caste, in our world, is the penitential class par excellence, continuing the role of the clergy under the Old Regime. We have to call its members what they are: officials of original sin. ~ Pascal Bruckner

The brutes do not admire each other. A horse does not admire his companion. Not that there is no rivalry between them in a race, but that is of no consequence; for, when in the stable, the heaviest and most ill-formed does not give up his oats to another as men would have others do to them. Their virtue is satisfied with itself. ~ Blaise Pascal

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree. ~ Blaise Pascal

Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. ~ Camille Paglia

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves. ~ Blaise Pascal

To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize. ~ Blaise Pascal

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~ Blaise Pascal

To think well; this is the principle of morality. ~ Blaise Pascal

I loved operations, and I loved operations far from the headquarters. I had no passion for corporate. ~ Jean-Pascal Tricoire

It has been said that I make chick flicks. This is not a compliment. ~ Amy Pascal

They do not know that they seek only the chase and not the quarry. ~ Blaise Pascal

I know you think that when you're 35, 45, 55, you'll be different. But I'm going to let you in on a bit of a secret. You're going to look different, and your life is going to be different, but in your head you'll always be that 16-year-old girl. ~ Francine Pascal

If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again. It ~ Blaise Pascal

Jessica stopped a few feet away so that Ken could get an optimal view of her body posed against the seductive backdrop of the sea, sand, and palm trees. ~ Francine Pascal

Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true. ~ Blaise Pascal

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die. ~ Blaise Pascal

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice. ~ Blaise Pascal

Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny. ~ Blaise Pascal

Symmetry is what we see at a glance. ~ Blaise Pascal

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus. ~ Blaise Pascal

All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room. ~ Blaise Pascal

Diversion consoles us - in trivial ways - in the face of our miseries or perplexities; yet, paradoxically, it becomes the worst of our miseries becuase it hinders us from ruminating on and understanding our true condition. Thus, Pascal warns, it 'leads us imperceptibly to destruction.' Why? If not for diversion, we would 'be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death.' Through the course of protracted stupefaction, we learn to become oblivious to our eventual oblivion. In so doing, we choke off the possibility of seeking real freedom. ~ Douglas Groothuis

All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone. ~ Blaise Pascal

There is a remarkable sentence of Pascal according to which we know too little to be dogmatists and too much to be skeptics, which expresses beautifully what Plato conveys through his dialogues. ~ Leo Strauss

Finally, let them recognise that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him. ~ Blaise Pascal

What then is to become of man? Will he be the equal of god or the beasts? What a terrifying distance! What then shall he be? Who cannot see from all this that man is lost, that he has fallen from his place, that he anxiously seeks it, and cannot find it again? And who then is to direct him there? The greatest men have failed. ~ Blaise Pascal

Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then; wager that he does exist. ~ Blaise Pascal

Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true. ~ Antony Flew

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. ~ Blaise Pascal

We run carelessly over the precipice after having put something in front of us to prevent us seeing it. ~ Blaise Pascal

Earthly things must be known to be loved; heavenly things must be loved to be known. ~ Blaise Pascal

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism. ~ Blaise Pascal

It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt ... ~ Blaise Pascal

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement! ~ Blaise Pascal

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse. ~ Blaise Pascal

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God. ~ Blaise Pascal

By the duty to be happy, I thus refer to the ideology ... that urges us to evaluate everything in terms of pleasure and displeasure ... on the one hand, we have to make the most of our lives; on the other, we have to be sorry and punish ourselves if we don't succeed in doing so. This is a perversion of a very beautiful idea: that everyone has a right to control his own destiny and to improve his life. ~ Pascal Bruckner

The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth. ~ Blaise Pascal

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God. ~ Blaise Pascal

Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler - such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal - were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts towards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits. ~ John Locke

Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is. ~ Blaise Pascal

Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves. ~ Blaise Pascal

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room. ~ Blaise Pascal

The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it. ~ Blaise Pascal

Jessica walked away from Aaron and Ken, flashing them both a big smile. They were both very attractive – she had dated each of them a number of times. In fact, not too long ago she had contemplated falling in love with Ken for lack of anything better to do. ~ Francine Pascal

I don't believe very much in corporate offices. I believe in leaders who are with their customers and their people. ~ Jean-Pascal Tricoire

Luck doesn't shine her light on each of us equally. She is arbitrary, irrational, unfair and sometimes downright cruel. ~ Francine Pascal

La dernière chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la première. (The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.) ~ Blaise Pascal

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first. ~ Blaise Pascal

Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures. ~ Blaise Pascal

Law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable. ~ Blaise Pascal

I start trembling at the very thought of the unplanned and unknown, but inevitable and unstoppable force with which parents leave traces in their children that, like traces of branding, can never be erased. The outlines of parental will and fear are written with a white-hot stylus in the souls of the children who are helpless and ignorant of what is happening to them. We need a whole life to find and decipher the branded text and we can never be sure we have understood it. ~ Pascal Mercier

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God incline his heart, and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing. ~ Blaise Pascal

I would have worked no matter what. I was born and raised that way. It occurred to me to be married second. ~ Amy Pascal

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power. ~ Blaise Pascal

Whatever the flows of our modern times are the idea is that you can create something new out of nothing. ~ Pascal Bruckner

Let a man choose what condition he will, and let him accumulate around him all the goods and gratifications seemingly calculated to make him happy in it; if that man is left at any time without occupation or amusement, and reflects on what he is, the meagre, languid felicity of his present lot will not bear him up. He will turn necessarily to gloomy anticipations of the future; and unless his occupation calls him out of himself, he is inevitably wretched. ~ Blaise Pascal

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts. ~ Blaise Pascal

It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness! ~ Blaise Pascal

I run a business. People want to work for less money, I pay them less money ... Women shouldn't be so grateful. Know what you're worth. Walk away. ~ Amy Pascal

I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him? ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

This religion so great in miracles, in men holy, pure and irreproachable, in scholars, great witnesses and martyrs, established kings - David - Isaiah, a prince of the blood; so great in knowledge, after displaying all its miracles and all its wisdom, rejects it all and says that it offers neither wisdom nor signs, but only the Cross and folly. ~ Blaise Pascal

The Stoics say, " Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us. ~ Blaise Pascal

There is some pleasure in being on board a ship battered by storms when one is certain of not perishing. ~ Blaise Pascal

If the foot had never realized it belonged to the body, & that there never was a body on which it depended, if it had only known & loved itself & then came to know that it really belonged to the body on which it depended, think of the regret & shame it would feel for its past existence. It would recognize how useless it had been to the body in spite of the life poured into it, & how it would have been destroyed if the body had rejected it & cut it off as the foot cut itself off from the body! How it would have desired earnestly to be kept on! How obediently it would let itself be governed by the will in charge of the body, to the point of being amputated if necessary! Otherwise it would cease to a member, for every member must be ready to perish for the sake of the whole, for whose sake alone exists. ~ Blaise Pascal

There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them. ~ Blaise Pascal