Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

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

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Little things comfort us because little things distress us.

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.

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

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

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

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.

We see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its nature with change in climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence; a meridian decides the truth.

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.

When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.