Pascal S Wager Quotes

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

I have always considered "Pascal's Wager" a questionable bet to place, since any God worth believing in would prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite. ~ Alan M. Dershowitz

Maybe it is like Pascal's Wager, but I want to believe in the immortality of the soul because consciousness is such a fantastic gift that is feels cruel and unfair to end it so quickly. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I suspect you're thinking of Pascal,' Finkler said, finally.'Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn't exist, you've nothing to lose. Whereas if you wager against God and He does exist ... '
'You're in the shit. ~ Howard Jacobson

Wagner cleared his throat once again, then pounded a few chords on the piano. But something unexpected happened when he started to sing. He sounded like Kermit the Frog being run over. ~ Dylan Callens

I wager that most human beings do five things a day they cannot logically explain. ~ A.S. King

5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a bet which rolls on profits from the success of one of the horse to engross the stake on the next one.
5.5 So a) To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers?Plus and minus, self-evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes, division. But these sings are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total of zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically improbable and mathematically insoluble?
5.6 Thus how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b, b, a (to the first), a (to the second), s, v?
B = s - v (*/+) a (to the first)
Or
a (to the second) + v + a (to the first) x s = b
5.7 Or is that the wrong way to put the question and express the accumulation? Is the application of logic to the human condition in and of itself self-defeating? What becomes of a chain of argument when the links are made of different metals, each with a separate frangibility?
5.8 Or is "link" a false metaphor?
5.9 But allowing that is not, if a link breaks, wherein lies the responsibility for ~ Julian Barnes

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small. ~ Blaise Pascal

Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for the sake of such qualities, which are not what makes up the self, since they are perishable? Would we love the substance of a person's soul, in the abstract, whatever qualities might be in it? That is not possible, and it would be wrong. Therefore we never love anyone, but only qualities. ~ Blaise Pascal

Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them. ~ Blaise Pascal

We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy. ~ Blaise Pascal

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will. ~ Blaise Pascal

Habit is the second nature which destroys the first. ~ Blaise Pascal

Who's the boy who thinks he can mess with my men?" he demanded.

"Nobody," said the boy. "Just the King of Cats."

The words made the gang draw up short; obviously the title meant something to them, though Paris had never heard it before.

"It's a very simple situation," the boy went on. "You can join the Rooks and follow my orders without question. Or you can immediately decide that your territory starts east of here. Screaming as you run is optional."

Paris suspected that it would be a good time for him to scream and run, but the situation had a sort of awful fascination. The boy was definitely, absolutely mad, and they were both going to be pounded to death, and he couldn't look away.

"Or you can fight me over it," said the boy. "Care to wager your gang on a duel?"

The leader hesitated a moment; then he sneered, "So long as you fight fair."

"Nobody gets anything but what he earns from me ~ Rosamund Hodge

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason. ~ Blaise Pascal

Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart. ~ Blaise Pascal

One constant is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different - appropriate - speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, "When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing." Since ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Blaise Pascal used to mark with charcoal the walls of his playroom, seeking a means of making a circle perfectly round and a triangle whose sides and angle were all equal. He discovered these things for himself and then began to seek the relationship which existed between them. He did not know any mathematical terms and so he made up his own. Using these names he made axioms and finally developed perfect demonstrations, until he had come to the thirty-second proposition of Euclid. ~ Catharine Cox Miles

Continuity in everything is unpleasant. ~ Blaise Pascal

Disappointment is considered bad. A thoughtless prejudice. How, if not through disappointment, should we discover what we have expected and hoped for? And where, if not in this discovery, should self-knowledge lie? So how could one gain clarity about oneself without disappointment?
...
One could have the hope that he would become more real by reducing expectations, shrink to a hard, reliable core and thus be immune to the pain of disappointment. But how would it be to lead a life that banished every long, bold expectation, a life where there were only banal expectations like "the bus is coming"? ~ Pascal Mercier

Since [man's] true nature has been lost, anything can become his nature: similarly, true good being lost, anything can become his true good. ~ Blaise Pascal

All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch. ~ Blaise Pascal

I met an American woman and got married so I had to get a job. ~ Walter Wager

The human heart was undeniably the stupidest organ in the body. ~ Francine Pascal

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him. ~ Blaise Pascal

Everything that is incomprehensible does not cease to exist. ~ Blaise Pascal

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy. ~ Blaise Pascal

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

You and I are both admirers of Marcus Aurelius, and you will remember this passage in his Meditations: "Do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul; but later thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of respecting and honoring thyself. For every man has but one life. But yours is nearly finished, though in it you had no regard for yourself but placed thy felicity in the souls of others. . . . But those who do not observe the impulses of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy." Thank ~ Pascal Mercier

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

If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others. ~ Blaise Pascal

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness ... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him. ~ Blaise Pascal

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. ~ Blaise Pascal

The cult of happiness turns into a huge concern which to my opinion is exactly contrary to what happiness should be: a paradise of enchantment. ~ Pascal Bruckner

We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness
the eighth beatitude. ~ Blaise Pascal