Blaise Pascal Quotes

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

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.

The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.

Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

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.

Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

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.

There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

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?

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.

To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.

The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.

Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.

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.

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.