All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.
Blaise PascalMust we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.
Blaise PascalIf 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.
Blaise PascalThere are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
Blaise Pascal