Best quotes from Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. His earliest mathematical work was on conic sections; he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16. He later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.

In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines (called Pascal’s calculators and later Pascalines), establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Like his contemporary René Descartes, Pascal was also a pioneer in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal wrote in defense of the scientific method and produced several controversial results.

He made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Following Torricelli and Galileo Galilei, he rebutted the likes of Aristotle and Descartes who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum in 1647. In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology.

His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. The latter contains Pascal’s wager, known in the original as the Discourse on the Machine, a fideistic probabilistic argument for God’s existence. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.

Some of the best quotes from Blaise Pascal are listed below.

1. “A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.” – Blaise Pascal
2. “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
3. “All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.” – Blaise Pascal
4. “And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?” – Blaise Pascal
5. “Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.” – Blaise Pascal
6. “As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.” – Blaise Pascal
7. “Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.” – Blaise Pascal
8. “Atheists ought to say what is perfectly evident; now it is not perfectly evident that the soul is material.” – Blaise Pascal
9. “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.” – Blaise Pascal
10. “Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.” – Blaise Pascal
11. “Brave deeds are wasted when hidden” – Blaise Pascal
12. “Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.” – Blaise Pascal
13. “Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.” – Blaise Pascal
14. “Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.” – Blaise Pascal
15. “Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.” – Blaise Pascal
16. “Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.” – Blaise Pascal
17. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” – Blaise Pascal
18. “Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.” – Blaise Pascal
19. “Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.” – Blaise Pascal
20. “Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.” – Blaise Pascal
21. “Either Christianity is true or it’s false. If you bet that it’s true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it is true, you’ve gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it’s false, you’ve lost nothing, but you’ve had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it’s false, you’ve lost nothing. But if you bet that it’s false, and it turns out to be true, you’ve lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.” – Blaise Pascal
22. “Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.” – Blaise Pascal
23. “Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.” – Blaise Pascal
24. “Force rules the world-not opinion, but it is an opinion that makes use of force.” – Blaise Pascal
25. “Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.” – Blaise Pascal
26. “Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.” – Blaise Pascal
27. “Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.” – Blaise Pascal
28. “Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.” – Blaise Pascal
29. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright” – Blaise Pascal
30. “Human beings must be known to be loved, but Divine beings must be loved to be known.” – Blaise Pascal
31. “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.” – Blaise Pascal
32. “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” – Blaise Pascal
33. “I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn’t than live as if he doesn’t exist to find out He does.” – Blaise Pascal
34. “I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.” – Blaise Pascal
35. “If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?” – Blaise Pascal
36. “If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.” – Blaise Pascal
37. “If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.” – Blaise Pascal
38. “If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.” – Blaise Pascal
39. “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.” – Blaise Pascal
40. “Imagination decides everything.” – Blaise Pascal
41. “In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.” – Blaise Pascal
42. “In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.” – Blaise Pascal
43. “Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.” – Blaise Pascal
44. “It is false zeal to keep truth while wounding charity.” – Blaise Pascal
45. “It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.” – Blaise Pascal
46. “It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.” – Blaise Pascal
47. “It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.” – Blaise Pascal
48. “It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.” – Blaise Pascal
49. “It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.” – Blaise Pascal
50. “It’s not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It’s those who write the songs.” – Blaise Pascal
51. “Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.” – Blaise Pascal
52. “Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.” – Blaise Pascal
53. “Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men’s souls, and a beautiful image it is.” – Blaise Pascal
54. “Kind words don’t cost much. Yet they accomplish much.” – Blaise Pascal
55. “Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.” – Blaise Pascal
56. “Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is thrown on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.” – Blaise Pascal
57. “Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great since I do them in your name!” – Blaise Pascal
58. “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.” – Blaise Pascal
59. “Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.” – Blaise Pascal
60. “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” – Blaise Pascal
61. “Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.” – Blaise Pascal
62. “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
63. “Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.” – Blaise Pascal
64. “Man’s sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.” – Blaise Pascal
65. “Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” – Blaise Pascal
66. “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next, make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.” – Blaise Pascal
67. “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” – Blaise Pascal
68. “Most of man’s trouble comes from his inability to be still.” – Blaise Pascal
69. “Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.” – Blaise Pascal
70. “Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.” – Blaise Pascal
71. “Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” – Blaise Pascal
72. “No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king … unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.” – Blaise Pascal
73. “Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.” – Blaise Pascal
74. “Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.” – Blaise Pascal
75. “Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.” – Blaise Pascal
76. “Once your soul has been enlarged by truth, it can never return to its original size.” – Blaise Pascal
77. “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
78. “One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.” – Blaise Pascal
79. “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.” – Blaise Pascal
80. “People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.” – Blaise Pascal
81. “Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.” – Blaise Pascal
82. “Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.” – Blaise Pascal
83. “Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.” – Blaise Pascal
84. “That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.” – Blaise Pascal
85. “The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.” – Blaise Pascal
86. “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.” – Blaise Pascal
87. “The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.” – Blaise Pascal
88. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me” – Blaise Pascal
89. “The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.” – Blaise Pascal
90. “The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.” – Blaise Pascal
91. “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” – Blaise Pascal
92. “The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.” – Blaise Pascal
93. “The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.” – Blaise Pascal
94. “The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.” – Blaise Pascal
95. “The only shame is to have none.” – Blaise Pascal
96. “The present is never our goal: the past and present are our means: the future alone is our goal. Thus, we never live but we hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.” – Blaise Pascal
97. “The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.” – Blaise Pascal
98. “The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.” – Blaise Pascal
99. “The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.” – Blaise Pascal
100. “There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first is rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.” – Blaise Pascal
101. “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.” – Blaise Pascal
102. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” – Blaise Pascal
103. “There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition” – Blaise Pascal
104. “Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere.” – Blaise Pascal
105. “Through space, the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought, I comprehend the world.” – Blaise Pascal
106. “To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.” – Blaise Pascal
107. “To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.” – Blaise Pascal
108. “To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.” – Blaise Pascal
109. “To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.” – Blaise Pascal
110. “To understand is to forgive.” – Blaise Pascal
111. “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” – Blaise Pascal
112. “Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.” – Blaise Pascal
113. “We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.” – Blaise Pascal
114. “We like to be deceived.” – Blaise Pascal
115. “We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.” – Blaise Pascal
116. “We never love a person, but only qualities.” – Blaise Pascal
117. “We run carelessly to the precipice after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.” – Blaise Pascal
118. “We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.” – Blaise Pascal
119. “We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.” – Blaise Pascal
120. “We view things not only from different sides but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.” – Blaise Pascal
121. “What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.” – Blaise Pascal
122. “What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.” – Blaise Pascal
123. “When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.” – Blaise Pascal
124. “When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.” – Blaise Pascal
125. “Words differently arranged to have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.” – Blaise Pascal
126. “You always admire what you really don’t understand.” – Blaise Pascal