96 Enlightening Quotes By Blaise Pascal That Will Help You In Life
Blaise Pascal was a renowned French scientist who made tremendous contributions to the field of mathematics and physics. He was mostly home-schooled by his father and published his first mathematical work at the early age of sixteen. His talent was recognized early on by his father and when he sent his essay on conics to eminent French theologist and mathematician Père Mersenne, many including Rene Descartes believed the theorem was propounded by Pascal's father. However, later the theorem was named after this mathematical genius as Pascal Theorem. Not only in the fields of probability and geometry but Pascal is also credited for inventing one of the foremost calculating device. Apparently he built the calculator to help his father in computing taxes. The probability theory put forth by Pascal laid the foundations of modern day economics. He also developed the Pascal triangle to represent binomial coefficients in a tabular form. The erudite mind was also responsible for deriving the proof of existence of vacuum.
Here are a few enligtening quotes by the famous scientist Blaise Pascal.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." (Letter 16, 1657)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
You always admire what you really don't understand.
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
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.
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back
When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.
Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.
The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.
We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
Little things comfort us because little things distress us.
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?