Blaise Pascal Quotes

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The parts of the universe… all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.

Blaise Pascal

All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them. A thought has escaped me. I wanted to write it down. I write instead, that it has escaped me.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

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 (Pensées, 1669)

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head (for it is only experience which teaches us that the head is more necessary than feet). But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

What a chimera is man! what a confused chaos! what a subject of contradiction! a professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth! the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty! the glory and the scandal of the universe!

Blaise Pascal

Let this effect of nature, which previously seemed to you impossible, make you know that there may be others of which you are still ignorant. Do not draw this conclusion from your experiment, that there remains nothing for you to know; but rather that there remains an infinity for you to know.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to choose one than another, trying nothing else?

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

There is internal war in man between reason and the passions. If he had only reason without passions. If he had only passions without reason. But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided against, and opposed to himself.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former. And the world feels this and does so; for the world is often a good judge.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1669)

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Blaise Pascal Biography

Born: June 19, 1623
Died: August 19, 1662

Blaise Pascal was a French scientist and philosopher. He is best known for his significant contributions to mathematics and science.

Notable Works

The Provincial Letters (1656 - 1657)
Pensées (1669)

Picture Quotes

We know truth not only by reason... Quote by Blaise Pascal
Imagination disposes of everything... Quote by Blaise Pascal Wisdom leads us back... Quote by Blaise Pascal The eternal being is forever if... Quote by Blaise Pascal