Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. Later a Jansenist scholar, he wrote two classics of French devotional thought, the Lettres Provinciales 1656–57,) directed against the casuistry of the Jesuits, and Pensées (1670,) a defense of Christianity.

Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Pascal was the son of a venerated mathematician and a local bureaucrat. Early in life, Pascal proved that he was a prodigy by discovering Euclid’s first 23 propositions for himself at the age of 11. Pascal’s work contains his famous theorem on a hexagram inscribed in a conic.

While only 17, Pascal published an essay on mathematics that René Descartes refused to recognize as being the work of a teen. Pascal produced (1642–44) a calculating device to aid his father in his local administration; Gottfried Leibniz later simplified it.

With Pierre de Fermat, Pascal laid the foundations of the mathematical system of probability. He also contributed to calculus and hydrodynamics, devising Pascal’s Law in 1647. He developed the hydraulic press, the barometer, and the syringe and published his work on vacuums in 1647. The SI unit of pressure is named after him.

In 1646, Pascal converted to Jansenism, and religion became progressively dominant in his life, culminating in him joining the Jansenist retreat at Port-royal Des Champs in 1655. There, Pascal disseminated a religious doctrine that clarified the experience of God through the heart instead of through reason. The establishment of his belief of intuitionism had a bearing on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and on the Existentialists.

Pascal’s notes for a casebook of Christian truths were found after his death and published as the Pensées in 1669. They contain intense perceptions of religious truths coupled with a suspicion of rationalist thought and theology.

Notable biographies of Pascal include Jean Mesnard’s Pascal: His Life and Works (1951; trans. 1952) and Ernest Mortimer’s Blaise Pascal: The Life and Work of a Realist (1959.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Blaise Pascal

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Light, Faith

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Discovery, Self-Discovery

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Science, Scientists

I have often said that all the misfortunes of men spring from their not knowing how to live quietly at home, in their own rooms.
—Blaise Pascal

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Enthusiasm

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law; and he is not to be accounted in fault whose crime is not the effect of choice, but force.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Necessity

Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing which they deny.—It is superior to their testimony, but never opposed to it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith

Losses are comparative, imagination only makes them of any moment.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Failures, Mistakes

Law, without force, is impotent.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Lawyers, Law

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Love, Feelings

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Greatness, Reason, Thinking, Thought, Thoughts

Justice without power is inefficient; power without justice is tyranny. Justice without power is opposed, because there are always wicked men. Power without justice is soon questioned. Justice and power must therefore be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Power, Justice

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Sin

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion; the unity which does not depend upon the multitude, is tyranny.
—Blaise Pascal

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Reason

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
—Blaise Pascal

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Evil

We sometimes learn more from the sight of evil than from an example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by the evil which is so common, while that which is good is so rare.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Evil, Evils

Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us.—We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes.—But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep them.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Fashion

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality.—Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Appreciation

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Oddity, Art, Painting, Painters, Peculiarity

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Money, Misery

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,—the root, the branch, the fruits,—the principles, the consequences.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Nature

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Truth

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Grief, Time

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.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Habits, Habit

Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Self-Discovery, Egotism

All mankind’s unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Happiness, Unhappiness

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