Blaise Pascal > Quotes

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

(Letter 16, 1657)”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

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

“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”
― Blaise Pascal

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”
― Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

“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

“Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
― Blaise Pascal

“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

“You always admire what you really don't understand.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

“I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”
― Blaise Pascal

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
― Blaise Pascal

“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”
― Blaise Pascal

“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

“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.”
― Blaise Pascal

“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”
― Blaise Pascal

“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

“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
― Blaise Pascal