Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal
“С какой лёгкостью и самодовольством злодействует человек, когда он верит, что творит благое дело!”
“Совесть — лучшая нравоучительная книга из всех, которыми мы обладаем, в нее следует чаще всего заглядывать.”
“If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.”
topics: humorous-quotes
“Величие человека тем и велико, что он сознает свое ничтожество.”
topics: selfrespect
“For, finally, what is the rank man occupies in Nature? A nonentity, as contrasted with infinity; a universe, contrasted with nonentity; a middle something between everything and nothing. He is infinitely remote from these two extremes; his existence is not less distant from the nonentity out of which he is taken, than from the infinity in which he is engulfed. His intellect holds the same rank in the order of intelligences, as his body does in the material universe, and all it can attain is, to catch some glimpses of objects that occupy the middle, in eternal despair of knowing either extreme—all things have sprung from nothing, and are borne forward to infinity. Who can follow out such an astonishing career? The Author of these wonders, and he alone, can comprehend them. This condition, the middle, namely, between two extremes, is characteristic of all our faculties. Our senses perceive nothing in the extreme. A very loud sound deafens us; a very intense light blinds us; a very great or a very short distance disables our vision; excessive length or excessive brevity obscures discourse; too much pleasure cloys, and unvaried harmony offends us. Extreme heat, or extreme cold, destroys sensation. Any qualities in excess are hurtful to us, and pass beyond the ranges of our senses. We cannot be said to feel them, but to endure them. Extreme youth and extreme old age alike enfeeble the mind; too much or too little food, disturbs its operations; too much, or too little instruction, represses its vigor. Extremes are to us, as though they did not exist, and we are nothing in reference to them. They elude us, or we elude them. Such is our real state; our acquirements are confined within limits which we cannot pass, alike incapable of attaining universal knowledge or of remaining in total ignorance. We are in the middle of a vast expanse, always unfixed, fluctuating between ignorance and knowledge; if we think of advancing further, our object shifts its position and eludes our grasp; it steals away and takes an eternal flight that nothing can arrest. This is our natural condition, altogether contrary, however, to our inclinations. We are inflamed with a desire of exploring everything, and of building a tower that shall rise into infinity, but our edifice is shattered to pieces, and the ground beneath it discloses a profound abyss.”
“Пусть человеку нет никакой выгоды лгать — это еще не значит, что он будет говорить правду: лгут просто во имя лжи.”
topics: ЛОЖЬ-И-ЛЖЕЦЫ
“Люди безумны, и это столь общее правило, что не быть безумцем было бы тоже своего рода безумием.”
topics: ЛЮДИ
“O rei está rodeado de pessoas cujo único pensamento é divertir o rei, e evitar que ele pense em si mesmo. Porque ele será infeliz, embora rei, se pensar em si mesmo.”
“There are only two kinds of men: righteous men who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous. Pascal, Pensées”
“Both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault. They are both in the wrong. True course is not to wager at all.”
“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.”
“We're not looking for this soft, peaceful existence which allows us to think about our unfortunate condition, nor the dangers of war or the burden of office, but the bustle which distracts and amuses us—The reason why we prefer the hunt to the kill. That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible.”
“It would therefore be a good thing for us to obey laws and customs because they are laws: to know that there is no right and just law to be brought in, that we know nothing about it and should consequently only follow those already accepted. In this way we should never give them up. But the people are not amenable to this doctrine, and thus, believing that truth can be found and resides in laws and customs, they believe them and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth (and not just of their authority, without truth). Thus they obey them but are liable to revolt as soon as they are shown to be worth nothing, which can happen with all laws if they are looked at from a certain point of view.”
“We do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own strength, but by the balancing of two opposed vices, just as we remain upright amidst two contrary gales. Remove one of the vices, and we fall into the other.”
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”
“Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle soit la comédie en tout le reste.”
“If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.”
“J’ay souvent dit, que tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne sçavoir pas se tenir en repos dans une chambre.”
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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.