Blaise Pascal Quotes

"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."

"It is false zeal to keep truth while wounding charity"

"You always admire what you really don't understand."

"The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."

"Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought."

"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."

"Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable"

"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."

"How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the following argument occurs to a reasonable man?"

"We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves."

"Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this"

"If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself."

"We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting."

"Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care."

"To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

"Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same."

"Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."

"It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants."

"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."

"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason."