Blaise Pascal Quotes

420 Sourced Quotes

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

Blaise Pascal
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal
I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.
Variant translation: I have made this one [letter] longer than usual because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Blaise Pascal
All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.

Blaise Pascal
Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

Blaise Pascal
Jurisdiction is not given for the sake of the judge, but for that of the litigant.

Blaise Pascal
All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.

Blaise Pascal
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.

Blaise Pascal
Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.

Blaise Pascal
There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.

Blaise Pascal
Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.

Blaise Pascal
Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

Blaise Pascal
It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.

Blaise Pascal
When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate.

Blaise Pascal
To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.

Blaise Pascal
If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.

Blaise Pascal
We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.

Blaise Pascal
Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.

Blaise Pascal
I have a hundred times wished that if a God maintains Nature, she should testify to Him unequivocally, and that, if the signs she gives are deceptive, she should suppress them altogether.

Blaise Pascal
We naturally believe ourselves far more capable of reaching the centre of things than of embracing their circumference. The visible extent of the world visibly exceeds us, but as we exceed little things, we think ourselves more capable of knowing them.

Blaise Pascal
Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible.... We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is....

Blaise Pascal
Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.

Blaise Pascal
Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.

Blaise Pascal
Amusement allures and deceives us and leads us down imperceptibly in thoughtlessness to the grave

Blaise Pascal
Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear.

Blaise Pascal
The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.

Blaise Pascal
Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.

Blaise Pascal
One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

Blaise Pascal