"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."
―Blaise Pascal
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"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart."
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"Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength."
―Blaise Pascal
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"There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying."
―Blaise Pascal
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"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?"
―Blaise Pascal
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"Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."
―Blaise Pascal
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"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
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"Mutual cheating is the foundation of society."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it."
―Blaise Pascal
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"If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Man's greatness lies in his power of thought."
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"What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable"
―Blaise Pascal
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"If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future."
―Blaise Pascal
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"You always admire what you really don't understand."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it."
―Blaise Pascal
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"To understand is to forgive."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room."
―Blaise Pascal
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"There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in"
―Blaise Pascal
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"The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted."
―Blaise Pascal
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"The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Continuous eloquence wearies."
―Blaise Pascal
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"If God does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing."
―Blaise Pascal
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"It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it."
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"No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth"
―Blaise Pascal
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"When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point."
―Blaise Pascal
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"For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible."
―Blaise Pascal
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"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."
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"All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."
―Blaise Pascal
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"No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first."
―Blaise Pascal
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"If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?"
―Blaise Pascal
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"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
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"It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart."
―Blaise Pascal
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"Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear."
―Blaise Pascal
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"It is not certain that everything is uncertain."
―Blaise Pascal
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Nationality: French |
Born: June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France
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Famous As:
Philosopher, Mathematician, Physicist,Writer, Inventor and Catholic Theologian.
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