Blaise Pascal Quotes

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me

It is not the length of years but a multitude of generations that makes things obscure. For truth is only perverted when men change.

No one has ever incurred martyrdom for miracles he claims to have seen; for, in the case of those which the Turks believe by tradition, human folly might go as far as martyrdom, but not for those actually seen.

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

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

The Jesuits have tried to combine God and the world, and have only earned the contempt of God and the world.

God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will. Humble their pride.

For after all, what is man in creation? Is he not a mere cipher compared with the infinite, a whole compared to the nothing, a mean between zero & all, infinitely remote from understanding of either extreme? Who can follow these astonishing processes? The Author of these wonders understands them, but no one else can.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man.

By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

As soon as the soul has been made to perceive that a thing can conduct it to that which it loves supremely, it must inevitably embrace it with joy.

If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.

Man’s greatness come from knowing he wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. (21)

Let them at least learn what is the religion they attack, before attacking it. If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But since, on the contrary, it says that men are