http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/...

Perhaps half of this was basically wasted on me. As an atheist, books providing proofs for the existence of God are perhaps 40 years or so too late. The problem here isn’t so much that he is trying to prove the existence of an entity that he himself admits par ...more

Pascal has caused atheists to doubt their atheism more often than Nietzsche has theists their theism - why? Because those that let their hearts guide their thoughts are never in doubt, but those who unwisely look to results to guide them, as macho ubermensches perforce exclusively must, are always f ...more

Introduction, by Anthony Levi
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Blaise Pascal

--Pensées

--Discussion with Monsieur de Sacy
--The Art of Persuasion

Writings on Grace:
--Letter on the Possibility of the Commandments
--Treatise concerning Predestination

Explanatory Notes
Thematic Index ...more

Religious Thoughts of a Mathematician
29 August 2016 - Paris, France

When I was learning French I was rather thrown by the way their numbers work after about 60, as is demonstrated by this picture, which shows how English, German, and French construct the number 98:



My first thought was 'this is abso ...more

Men are so necessarily mad that it would be another twist of madness not to be mad.

And what completes our inability to understand things is that they are not so simple in themselves, and we are made up of two different kinds of opposing natures, body and soul...For this reason almost all philosop

...more

This bushy and dense work is the last book of Jansenist Blaise Pascal, singing the praises of the Christian religion in the face of non-believers and sceptics in a whole lot of reflections. For my part, this reading was compulsory in the academic baccalaureate program, since I only put two stars, it ...more

“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows ...more

Pascal's Pensées were never intended to be read, much like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. As such, they honestly reveal the private thoughts of great philosophers on the human condition, and lo, they speak of how miserable people are. Both were lonely men made so by their great intellect and great ch ...more

"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 ...more

Pascal seems to have been born for greatness. At a young age he displayed an intense talent for mathematics, apparently deducing a few propositions of Euclid by himself; and he matured into one of the great mathematical minds of Europe, making fundamental contributions to the science of probability. ...more