Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal
“is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good.”
“What is wonderful, incomparable and wholly divine is that this religion which has always survived has always been under attack.”
“[133] Diversion. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”
“Gustavo Solivellas dice: "El corazón tiene razones que la razón ignora" (Blaise Pascal)”
“For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed. Porque, finalmente, ¿qué es el hombre en la naturaleza? Una nada frente al infinito, un todo frente a la nada, un medio entre nada y todo. Infinitamente alejado de comprender los extremos, el fin de las cosas y su principio le están invenciblemente ocultos en un secreto impenetrable, igualmente incapaz de ver la nada de donde ha sido sacado y el infinito en que se halla sumido.”
“Man is neither angel nor devil, and his tragedy is that he who tries too hard to play the first too often ends up as the second.”
“Tikai doma mūs padara lielākus, nevis telpa un laiks, kuru ietvaros mēs esam nekas. Mēs nekad nedzīvojam tagadnē. Mēs steidzinām nākotni un piesaucam pagātni, cenšamies to atgriezt, it kā tā būtu aizgājusi no mums pārāk ātri. Mēs esam tik nesaprātīgi, ka klaiņojam laikā, kas mums nepieder, un ignorējam vienīgo, kas mums pieder - t.i., tagadni. [..] Lūk, tā arī iznāk, ka mēs nekad nedzīvojam, bet tikai grasāmies to darīt un, piesaucot laimi, to nekad neiegūstam.”
“Being unable to overcome death, misery, and uncertainty, men have agreed, in order to be happy, not to think about them.”
“All human troubles derive from our inability to sit still and alone in a room.”
topics: how-to-live
“Earthly things must be known to be loved; heavenly things must be loved to be known.”
“But for this mystery [of original sin], the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves.”
“What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge, but its quality. You can know many things without knowing that which is most important. There are two types of ignorance, the pure, natural ignorance into which all people are born, and the ignorance of the so-called wise. You will see that many among those who call themselves scholars do not know real life, and they despise simple people and simple things.”
“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”
“Che non si dica che non ho detto niente di nuovo: la disposizione delle materie è nuova.”
“What astonishes us most is to observe that everyone is not astonished at his own weakness.”
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?”
“The future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
“Why are we not angry if we are told that we have a headache, and why are we angry if we are told that we reason badly, or choose wrongly?" The reason is that we are quite certain that we have not a headache, or are not lame, but we are not so sure that we make a true choice. So having assurance only because we see with our whole sight, it puts us into suspense and surprise when another with his whole sight sees the opposite, and still more so when a thousand others deride our choice. For we must prefer our own lights to those of so many others, and that is bold and difficult.”
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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.