Pensées Quotes

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“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, Pensées

“To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)”
― Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensees

“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensees

“Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Little things comfort us because little things distress us.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings

“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, Pensées

“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“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 throws 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, Pensées

“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, Pensées

“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.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Le coeur a ses raisons que le raison ne connaît point.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Justice, might.—It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might, and for this end make what is just strong, or what is strong just.

Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it—memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis (remembrance of a guest who tarried but a day)—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?”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

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 it throws 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, Pensées

“What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Atheists. What grounds have they for saying that no one can rise from the dead? Which is harder, to be born or to rise again? That what has never been should be, or that what has been should be once more? Is it harder to come into existence than to come back? Habit makes us find the one easy, while lack of habit makes us find the other impossible.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées