Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal
“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.”
“it is so inevitable that men will be fools that it is only by another shift of folly that one might not be”
“But for this mystery [of original sin], the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves.”
“Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are slaughtered each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.”
“Earthly things must be known to be loved; heavenly things must be loved to be known.”
“All human troubles derive from our inability to sit still and alone in a room.”
topics: how-to-live
“Wanneer je op een nuttige manier kritiek wilt leveren en een ander laten inzien dat hij zich vergist, moet je onderzoeken van welke kant hij de zaak bekijkt - want van dat standpunt is die meestal juist - en de juistheid hiervan tegenover hem erkennen, maar hem tevens laten zien van welk standpunt zij niet juist is. Daar neemt hij genoegen mee, want hij ziet dat hij zich niet vergist heeft en alleen maar heeft verzuimd om alle kanten te bekijken. Je wordt namelijk niet boos omdat je niet alles ziet, maar je wilt je niet vergissen. Misschien komt dat omdat de mens van nature niet alles kan zien en zich van nature niet kan vergissen ten aanzien van de kant die hij wel ziet omdat de zintuiglijke waarnemingen altijd waar zijn.”
topics: vergissen
“Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
“Being unable to overcome death, misery, and uncertainty, men have agreed, in order to be happy, not to think about them.”
“Weltliche Dinge muß man erkennen, damit man sie lieben kann. Göttliche Dinge muß man lieben, damit man sie erkennen kann.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Суть себялюбия и вообще яеловеческого "я" в том, что оно любит только себя и печётся только о себе”
topics: Я-хочу
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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.