Blaise Pascal
Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous
Pensées
(1670).
This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous
Leviathan
(1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.
A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the
Provincial Letters
, against the Jesuits in 1657.
Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”
Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.
“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”
“Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
“Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
“Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.”
“Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.”
“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
“Nie betrieben die Menschen das Böse so umfassend und freudig wie aus religiöser Überzeugung.”
“We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.”
“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference...”
“Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.”
“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”
“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”
“I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory ... You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master, do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.”
“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
“Nous sommes de bien petites mécaniques égarées par les infinis.”
“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”
“By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.”
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”
“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
“Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.”
“Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.”
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."(Letter 16, 1657)”
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
“To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.”
“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.”
“The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play”
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
“Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)”
“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”
“You always admire what you really don't understand.”
“Little things comfort us because little things distress us.”