Blaise Pascal Quotes
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If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.
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Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.
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Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.
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It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
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There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.
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Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.
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If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.
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If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.
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We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.
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The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
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I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.
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The only shame is to have none.
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Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.
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Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.
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The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
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To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
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The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
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How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?
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If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?
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If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
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Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
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Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.
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Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.
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A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.