Quotes from Blaise Pascal

It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.

Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.

The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

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.

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.

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.

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

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

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

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

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

Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Le coeur a ses raisons que le raison ne connaît point.