100 Blaise Pascal Quotes About Mathematics, Philosophy, And Religion

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, and theologian.

With famous quotes about a God-shaped vacuum in all our hearts, and a cheeky comment about a letter and not being able to make it shorter - Pascal is well-known for his quotes. If you enjoy reading Blaise Pascal quotes, why not take a look at [René Descartes quotes] and Locke quotes.

Blaise Pascal is important for all mathematicians across the world for his groundbreaking game theory and existentialism. He was also an expert in probability, all of which make him well known across the globe. Check out these famous Blaise Pascal quotes.

1. "Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness."

- Blaise Pascal.

2. "We never love a person, but only qualities."

- Blaise Pascal.

3. "It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory."

- Blaise Pascal.

4. "Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

7. “Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

- Blaise Pascal.

 8. “Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.”

- Blaise Pascal.

9. "If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world."

- Blaise Pascal.

10. "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed."

- Blaise Pascal.

11. "It is false zeal to keep truth while wounding charity."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

13. “And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?”

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

16. "Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought."

- Blaise Pascal.

17. "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."

- Blaise Pascal.

18. "Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree."

- Blaise Pascal.

19. "As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

23. "I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

- Blaise Pascal.

24. "Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it."

- Blaise Pascal.

25. "We run carelessly to the precipice after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

28. "We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are."

- Blaise Pascal.

29. "Imagination decides everything."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

32. "Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”

- Blaise Pascal.

Existentialism found one of its greatest advocates - and earliest pioneer in Blaise Pascal. He had spoken at length about human existence and its meaning in co-relation with god, the human mind, and other cosmic forces. So, here are Blaise Pascal quotes on existentialism and philosophy.

33. "Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."

- Blaise Pascal.

34. “The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”

- Blaise Pascal.

35. "The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences."

- Blaise Pascal.

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

- Blaise Pascal.

37. "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."

- Blaise Pascal.

38. "When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before."

- Blaise Pascal.

39. "Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed."

- Blaise Pascal.

40. "If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything."

- Blaise Pascal.

41. "A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us."

-Blaise Pascal.

42. “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

-Blaise Pascal.

43. "The only shame is to have none."

-Blaise Pascal.

44. "Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature."

-Blaise Pascal.

45. "Brave deeds are wasted when hidden"

-Blaise Pascal.

46. "Through space, the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought, I comprehend the world."

-Blaise Pascal.

47. "We like to be deceived."

-Blaise Pascal.

48. "The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family."

-Blaise Pascal.

49. "To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

-Blaise Pascal.

50. "The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched."

-Blaise Pascal.

51. "The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever."

-Blaise Pascal.

52. "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."

-Blaise Pascal.

53. “To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.”

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

55. "It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants."

-Blaise Pascal.

56. "Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

58. "Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."

-Blaise Pascal.

59. "Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world."

-Blaise Pascal.

60. "We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end."

-Blaise Pascal.

61. "To find recreation in amusement is not happiness."

-Blaise Pascal.

62. "All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."

-Blaise Pascal.

63. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me”

-Blaise Pascal.

64. “Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

-Blaise Pascal.

65. "People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."

-Blaise Pascal.

66. “You always admire what you really don't understand.”

-Blaise Pascal.

67. "Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them."

-Blaise Pascal.

68. “To understand is to forgive.”

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

70. "Words differently arranged to have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."

-Blaise Pascal.

71. "The present is never our goal: the past and present are our means: the future alone is our goal. Thus, we never live but we hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so."

-Blaise Pascal.

72. "We view things not only from different sides but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

As a theologian, Blaise Pascal defended Christianity and the old values of God, and the sacred nature of religion. He firmly believed that Christianity was the way to go. To get a glimpse of his beliefs, do read these Blaise Pascal quotes.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

75. "What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

77. "Human beings must be known to be loved, but Divine beings must be loved to be known."

-Blaise Pascal.

78. "The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him."

-Blaise Pascal.

79. "In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."

-Blaise Pascal.

80. "It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer."

-Blaise Pascal.

81. "It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason."

-Blaise Pascal.

82. "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."

-Blaise Pascal.

83. “I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”

-Blaise Pascal.

84. "Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

87. "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."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

89. “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.”

-Blaise Pascal.

90. "Atheists ought to say what is perfectly evident; now it is not perfectly evident that the soul is material."

-Blaise Pascal.

91. “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.”

-Blaise Pascal.

92. "Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God."

-Blaise Pascal.

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

-Blaise Pascal.

94. "Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair."

-Blaise Pascal.

95. "Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves."

-Blaise Pascal.

96. "That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it."

-Blaise Pascal.

97. "Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints."

-Blaise Pascal.

98. "It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist."

-Blaise Pascal.

99. "If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?"

-Blaise Pascal.

100. "The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him."

-Blaise Pascal.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Blaise Pascal quotes then why not take a look at inspirational math quotes, or logic quotes.