Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal
“God's will has been to redeem men and open the way of salvation to those who seek it, but men have shown themselves so unworthy that it is right for God to refuse to some, for their hardness of heart, what he grants to others by a mercy they have not earned... 'There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”
“As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.”
topics: Apathy
“Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.”
topics: Apathy
“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”
“The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.”
topics: Apathy
“The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.”
topics: Apathy
“The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.”
“We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.”
topics: Apathy
“We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.”
topics: Apathy
“The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.”
topics: Apathy
“We are so little and vain that the esteem of five or six persons about us is enough to content and amuse us.”
topics: Apathy
“Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.”
topics: Atheism
“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.”
“No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.”
topics: Believing
“All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre.”
topics: Carnality
“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.”
“All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.”
“Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.”
topics: Character
“Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.”
topics: Christians
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Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises.
At 16, Pascal began designing a calculating machine, which he finally perfected when he was thirty, the pascaline, a beautiful handcrafted box about fourteen by five by three inches. The first accurate mechanical calculator was born.
Pascal was dismayed and disgusted by society's reactions to his machine and completely renounced his interest in science an mathematics, devoting the rest of his life to God. He is best known for his collection of spiritual essays, Les Pensees.
Ironically, Pascal, who was a genius by any measure, with one of the finest brains of all time, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 39.
Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises.
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 generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensees.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.