Wise words from Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (June 19th,1623 – August 19th,1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, writer, philosopher, child prodigy, and inventor of the mechanical calculator. His earliest mathematical work was on projective geometry at the age of 16. He also heavily influenced the development of modern economics and social science.

Below we list words of wisdom by Blaise Pascal.

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."

"Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years."

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

"Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size."

"Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives."

"One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts."

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."

"In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart."

"The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog."

"Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth."

"It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs."

"Man's greatness lies in his power of thought."

"Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries."

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

"Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end."

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."

"Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen."

"Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God."

"There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous."

"Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still."

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

"We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything."

"Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much."

"Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary."

"When intuition and logic agree, you are always right."

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

"I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you."

"Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness."

"Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason."

"Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness."

"Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."

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

"Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!"

"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus."

"If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything."

Copyright © Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo