Pascal Quotes

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.

It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.

The God of the infinite is the God of the infinitesimal.

It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.

The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.

Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.

Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.

The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.

All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.

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

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.

If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.

Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.

Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.

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

All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.

Each one is all in all to himself; for being dead, all is dead to him.

Eloquence is the painting of thought.

Not to be mad is another form of madness

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

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

Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.

All is one, all is different. How many natures exist in man? How many vocations? And by what chance does each man ordinarily choose what he has heard praised?

Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.

The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.

If you believe in God you are at no disadvantage in this life, and at considerable advantage in the next. If you do not believe, but find in the next that there was a next, you are most unfortunate!

The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.

Dans une grande a" me tout est grand. In a great soul everything isgreat.

L'on a beau se cacher a' soi-me" me, l'on aime toujours. We vainly conceal from ourselves the fact that we are always in love.

Admiration spoils all from infancy.

If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.

Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is.

Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything...