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

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Beauty, Virtues

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what he loves.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Passion

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Listening

The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Oddity, Peculiarity, Life

If a soldier or laborer complains of the hardships of his lot, set him to do nothing.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Soldiers

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Weather

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

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
—Blaise Pascal

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

It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith, Instincts, Belief, God, Divinity

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Thought, Thinking, Thoughts

It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Education, Knowledge, Learning

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Winning, Effort, Success, Victory

To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. So far from greatness consisting in going beyond its limits, it really consists in keeping within them.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Moderation

We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Respect

It is the contest that delights us, not the victory. We are pleased with the combat of animals, but not with the victor tearing the vanquished. What is sought for is the crisis of victory, and the instant it comes, it brings satiety.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Victory

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Desires, Desire

If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Belief

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 quarrelled with him?
—Blaise Pascal

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Fame

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers, Letters

The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.
—Blaise Pascal

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

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Change

Faith is God felt by heart, not by reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith, Belief

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

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others, and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Vice

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: Self-Discovery, Discovery

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Philosophy, Science

The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Innovation, Originality

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