Blaise Pascal / 1623–1662 / France / Mathematician, Physicist, Philosopher, Theologian
Beginning
Things are always at their best in their beginning.
Source: Provincial Letters, Letter IV (1656).
Belief
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
Source: De l’art de persuader [On the Art of Persuasion] (1658).
Distraction
Distraction.—When I have sometimes considered the various troubles of men and the perils and pains they expose themselves to, in the court, in war, whence flow so many quarrels, passions, and bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have often said that all of men’s unhappiness derives from one single thing: that they cannot rest quietly in a room.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #139; first published posthumously in 1670.
Equality
Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.
Source: Three Discourses on the Condition of the Great (written 1660; published 1670).
If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.
Source: Three Discourses on the Condition of the Great (written 1660, published 1670).
Friends
I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #101; first published posthumously in 1670.
God
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
Source: “Mémorial” [Remembrance], a parchment found sewn into the lining of Pascal’s overcoat after his death, commemorating a an epiphany he experienced between 10:30 pm, November 23, and12:30 am, November 24, 1654, known as the “nuit de feu” [night of fire].
Justice
The justest man in the world is not allowed to be judge in his own cause.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #82; first published posthumously in 1670.
Liberty
It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #379; first published posthumously in 1670.
Man
What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #72; first published posthumously in 1670.
The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #127; first published posthumously in 1670.
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.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #347; first published posthumously in 1670.
Meaning of Life
When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it—Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis*—the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #205; first published posthumously in 1670.
*”[. . . like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and] passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day” (Wisdom 5:14 KJV).
Morality
The vanity of the sciences.—The science of external things will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction; but the science of ethics will always console me for ignorance of the external sciences.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #67; first published posthumously in 1670.
Persuasion
The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!
Source: De l’art de persuader [On the Art of Persuasion] (1658).
Reasons
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #277; first published posthumously in 1670.
Self-Importance
How many kingdoms know nothing of us!
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #207; first published posthumously in 1670.
Truth
Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them…the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.
Source: De l’art de persuader [On the Art of Persuasion] (1658).
God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will.
Source: De l’art de persuader [On the Art of Persuasion] (1658).
Universe
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
Source: Pensées [Thoughts], Léon Brunschvicg ed. #206; first published posthumously in 1670.
Writing
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Source: Provincial Letters, Letter XVI (1656).