Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
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The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.
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Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
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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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How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.
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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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It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
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One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.
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Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.
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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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All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.
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Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.
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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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The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
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Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of.
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Continued eloquence is wearisome.
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C'est une maladie naturelle à l'homme de croire qu'il possède la vérité directement…
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We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness--the eighth beatitude.
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Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
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Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
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Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
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People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.