01 July 2019

Blaise Pascal - Collected Quotes

"Thus, joining the rigor of demonstrations in mathematics with the uncertainty of chance, and conciliating these apparently contradictory matters, it can, taking its name from both of them, with justice arrogate the stupefying name: The Mathematics of Chance." (Blaise Pascal, [Address to the Academie Parisienne de Mathematiques] 1654)

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the times of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference, and based also on the face of man; whence it happens that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in height or depth." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"Take away probability, and you can no longer please the world; give probability, and you can no longer displease it." (Blaise Pascal, "Thoughts", 1670)

"We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus, we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"We see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its nature with change in climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence: a meridian decides the truth." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"What is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670) 

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." (Blaise Pascal)

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