Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal
To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist and theologian.

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Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.

If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again.

• People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
  • The Art of Persuasion.

• Entre nous, et l'enfer ou le ciel, il n'y a que la vie entre deux, qui est la chose du monde la plus fragile.
  • Discours sur les passions de l'amour
  • Between us, and Hell or Heaven, there is only life between the two, which is the most fragile thing in the world.
    • 213
  • Variant translation: Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

• Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
  • I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
  • Source: Provincial Letters: Letter XVI (English Translation)
  • Literally: I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
  • Such statements have also been attributed to Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Cicero, and others besides, but this article at Quote Investigator concludes that Pascal's statement is likely the original source of the phrase.

• L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête.
  • Laf. 678.

• It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
  • Pensées (1670) Chapter 4, I

• For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?
  • Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum.

• Habit is a second nature and it destroys the first.
  • Pensées (1670) No. 376.

• In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
  • Blaise Pascal, quoted in Thoughts from Earth (2004), p. 9.

[edit] Pensées (1669)

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things.

[edit] Section I Thoughts on Mind and Style (1-59)

• ...it is rare that mathematicians are intuitive, and that men of intuition are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat matters of intuition mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous, wishing to begin with definitions and then with axioms, which is not the way to proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so, but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules; for the expression of it is beyond all men, and only a few can feel it. 2

• There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak. 2

• Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance. 3

• La vraie morale se moque de la morale.
  • True morality makes fun of morality.
  • True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect. 4 [Variant Translation]

• ...it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect. 4

• Se moquer de la philosophie, c'est vraiment philosopher 4
  • To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

• The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and we cannot make this choice, if they be not already improved and not corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it. 6

• The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. 7

• When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. 9

• ...no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true. 9

• People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. 10

• When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. 14

• Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way—(1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it. 16

• It [eloquence] consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. ...We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart... We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect. 16

• Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place. 21

• Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference... 28

• Beauty of omission, of judgment. 30

• ...whoever imagines a woman after this model, which consists in saying little things in big words, will see a pretty girl adorned with mirrors and chains... 33

• Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former. And the world feels this and does so; for the world is often a good judge. 37

• ...when we wish to demonstrate a general theorem, we must give the rule as applied to a particular case; but if we wish to demonstrate a particular case, we must begin with the general rule. For we always find the thing obscure which we wish to prove, and that clear which we use for the proof; for, when a thing is put forward to be proved, we first fill ourselves with the imagination that it is therefore obscure, and on the contrary that what is to prove it, is clear, and so we understand it easily. 40

• Man loves malice, but not against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud. 41

• Certain authors, speaking of their works, say, "My book," "My commentary," "My history," etc. They resemble middle-class people who have a house of their own, and always have "My house" on their tongue. They would do better to say, "Our book," "Our commentary," "Our history," etc., because there is in them usually more of other people's than their own. 43

• Do you wish people to believe good of you? Don't speak. 44

• The same meaning changes with the words which express it. Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them. 50

• We either carry our audience with us, or irritate them. 57

• The only thing bad is their excuse. 58

[edit] Section II The Misery of Man without God (60-183)

• I might well have taken this discourse in an order like this: to show the vanity of all conditions of men, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have been kept. I know a little what it is, and how few people understand it. No human science can keep it. Saint Thomas did not keep it. Mathematics keep it, but they are useless on account of their depth. 61

• One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better. 66

• Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science. 67

• When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing. 69

• Nature has set us so well in the center, that if we change one side of the balance, we change the other also. I act. This makes me believe that the springs in our brain are so adjusted that he who touches one touches also its contrary. 70

• Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same. 71

• Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. [Note: M. Havet traces this saying to Empedocles] In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought. 72
  • C'est une sphère infinie, dont le centre est partout et la circonférence nulle part.
  • It is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

• For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed. 72

• ...as nature has graven her image and that of her Author on all things, they almost all partake of her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the extent of their researches. For who doubts that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems to solve? They are also infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises; for it is clear that those which are put forward as ultimate are not self-supporting, but are based on others which, again having others for their support, do not permit of finality. ...Of these two Infinites of science, that of greatness is the most palpable, and hence a few persons have pretended to know all things. ...the infinitely little is the least obvious. Philosophers have much oftener claimed to have reached it, and it is here they have all stumbled. ...we need no less capacity for attaining the Nothing than the All. Infinite capacity is required for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall have understood the ultimate principles of being might also attain to the knowledge of the Infinite. The one depends on the other, and one leads to the other. These extremes meet and reunite by force of distance, and find each other in God, and in God alone. 72

• Excessive qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the senses; we do not feel but suffer them. Extreme youth and extreme age hinder the mind, as also too much and too little education. In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. 72

• Since everything then is cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail. The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of nature, in comparison with the continual change which goes on within us, must have the same effect. 72

• ...it is impossible that our rational part should be other than spiritual; and if any one maintain that we are simply corporeal, this would far more exclude us from the knowledge of things, there being nothing so inconceivable as to say that matter knows itself. It is impossible to imagine how it should know itself. 72

• So if we are simply material, we can know nothing at all; and if we are composed of mind and matter, we cannot know perfectly things which are simple, whether spiritual or corporeal. Hence it comes that almost all philosophers have confused ideas of things, and speak of material things in spiritual terms, and of spiritual things in material terms. For they say boldly that bodies have a tendency to fall, that they seek after their centre, that they fly from destruction, that they fear the void, that they have inclinations, sympathies, antipathies, all of which attributes pertain only to mind. And in speaking of minds, they consider them as in a place, and attribute to them movement from one place to another; and these are qualities which belong only to bodies. 72

• Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being. 72

• One says that the sovereign good consists in virtue, another in pleasure, another in the knowledge of nature, another in truth, another in total ignorance, another in indolence, others in disregarding appearances, another in wondering at nothing, and the true skeptics in their indifference, doubt, and perpetual suspense, and others, wiser, think to find a better definition. We are well satisfied. 73

• I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God. 77

• Epictetus goes much further when he asks: Why do we not lose our temper if someone tells us that we have a headache, while we do lose it if someone says there is anything wrong with our arguments or our choice? 80

• It is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false. 81

• Imagination.—It is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, the more deceptive, that she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false. I do not speak of fools, I speak of the wisest men; and it is among them that the imagination has the great gift of persuasion. Reason protests in vain; it cannot set a true value on things. 82

• Imagination.—This arrogant power, the enemy of reason, who likes to rule and dominate it, has established in man a second nature to show how all-powerful she is. She makes men happy and sad, healthy and sick, rich and poor; she compels reason to believe, doubt, and deny; she blunts the senses, or quickens them; she has her fools and sages; and nothing vexes us more than to see that she fills her devotees with a satisfaction far more full and entire than does reason. 82

• Those who have a lively imagination are a great deal more pleased with themselves than the wise can reasonably be. They look down upon men with haughtiness; they argue with boldness and confidence, others with fear and diffidence; and this gaiety of countenance often gives them the advantage in the opinion of the hearers, such favor have the imaginary wise in the eyes of judges of like nature. Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason which can only make its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame. What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent! 82
  • Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval. [Variant Translation]
  • Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be. [Variant Translation]

• How much greater confidence has an advocate, retained with a large fee, in the justice of his cause! How much better does his bold manner make his case appear to the judges, deceived as they are by appearances! How ludicrous is reason, blown with a breath in every direction! 82
  • An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just. [Variant Translation]

• Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame. 82

• Put the world's greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. 82

• The wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has everywhere rashly introduced. 82

• He who would follow reason only would be deemed foolish by the generality of men. We must judge by the opinion of the majority of mankind. Because it has pleased them, we must work all day for pleasures seen to be imaginary; and after sleep has refreshed our tired reason, we must forthwith start up and rush after phantoms, and suffer the impressions of this mistress of the world. 82

• Our magistrates have known well this mystery. Their red robes, the ermine in which they wrap themselves like furry cats, the courts in which they administer justice, the fleurs-de-lis, and all such august apparel were necessary; if the physicians had not their cassocks and their mules, if the doctors had not their square caps and their robes four times too wide, they would never have duped the world, which cannot resist so original an appearance. If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would of itself be venerable enough. But having only imaginary knowledge, they must employ those silly tools that strike the imagination with which they have to deal; and thereby in fact they inspire respect. 82

• Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately. If they reach the point, they either crush it, or lean all round, more on the false than on the true. 82

• Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. These two sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn. The senses mislead the reason with false appearances, and receive from reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply to her; reason has her revenge. The passions of the soul trouble the senses, and make false impressions upon them. They rival each other in falsehood and deception. 83

• Notre raison est toujours déçue par l'inconstance des apparences. 83
  • Our reason is always disappointed by the inconsistency of appearances.

• The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God. 84

• Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing. It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain. 85

• ...how shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies. All that is made perfect by progress perishes also by progress. All that has been weak can never become absolutely strong. We say in vain, "He has grown, he has changed"; he is also the same. 88

• Custom is our nature. He who is accustomed to the faith believes in it, can no longer fear hell, and believes in nothing else. He who is accustomed to believe that the king is terrible ... etc. Who doubts then that our soul, being accustomed to see number, space, motion, believes that and nothing else? 89

• Parents fear lest the natural love of their children may fade away. What kind of nature is that which is subject to decay? Custom is a second nature which destroys the former. But what is nature? For is custom not natural? I am much afraid that nature is itself only a first custom, as custom is a second nature. 93

• Memory, joy, are intuitions; and even mathematical propositions become intuitions, for education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education. 95

• When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural effects, we are not willing to receive good reasons when they are discovered. 96

• The most important affair in life is the choice of a calling; chance decides it. Custom makes men masons, soldiers, slaters. ...We choose our callings according as we hear this or that praised or despised in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly. ...It is custom then which... constrains nature. But sometimes nature gains the ascendancy, and preserves man's instinct, in spite of all custom, good or bad. 97

• It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. 98

• The will is one of the chief factors in belief, not that it creates belief, but because things are true or false according to the aspect in which we look at them. The will, which prefers one aspect to another, turns away the mind from considering the qualities of all that it does not like to see; and thus the mind, moving in accord with the will, stops to consider the aspect which it likes, and so judges by what it sees. 99

• Self-love.—The nature of self-love and of this human Ego is to love self only and consider self only. But what will man do? He cannot prevent this object that he loves from being full of faults and wants. He wants to be great, and he sees himself small. He wants to be happy, and he