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Blaise Pascal Quotes
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144 Quotes to Inspire Timeless Reflection and Deep Insight

Discover the profound wisdom of Blaise Pascal through his most famous quotes. From the power of knowledge to the complexity of human emotions, Pascal's words will inspire and provoke deep reflection. Dive into his timeless insights in this curated collection.

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. He was a child prodigy who showed talent in various fields from an early age. He wrote a significant treatise on projective geometry at the age of 16 and corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, greatly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Pascal also made pioneering contributions to calculating machines, establishing himself as one of the first inventors of the mechanical calculator.

In addition to his achievements in mathematics and invention, Pascal was also a pioneer in natural and applied sciences. He defended the scientific method and challenged popular beliefs of his time. His work on fluids clarified concepts such as pressure and vacuum by building upon the previous research of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal's religious journey led him to identify with the Jansenism movement within Catholicism, which influenced his later philosophical and theological writings. His most famous works include the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, where he expressed his beliefs through arguments like "Pascal's wager." Despite struggling with poor health throughout his life, Pascal left a lasting impact on multiple disciplines before passing away at only 39 years old.

✵ 19. June 1623 – 19. August 1662
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Blaise Pascal: 144 quotes190 likes

Blaise Pascal Quotes

“Several particular maxims… are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.”

Blaise Pascal

FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
Note on a parchment stitched to the lining of Pascal's coat, found by a servant shortly after his death, as quoted in Burkitt Speculum religionis (1929), p. 150

“In reading this author [ Montaigne ] and comparing him with Epictetus, I have found that they are assuredly the two greatest defenders of the two most celebrated sects of the world, and the only ones conformable to reason, since we can only follow one of these two roads, namely: either that there is a God, and then we place in him the sovereign good; or that he is uncertain, and that then the true good is also uncertain, since he is incapable of it.”

Blaise Pascal

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne

“I make no doubt… that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.”

Blaise Pascal

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne

“It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?”

Blaise Pascal

Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum (c.1651)

“Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove all propositions, and to employ nothing for their proof but axioms fully evident of themselves, or propositions already demonstrated or admitted; Never to take advantage of the ambiguity of terms by failing mentally to substitute definitions that restrict or explain them.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! …it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation… He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“Rules for Definitions. I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that the clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Blaise Pascal

“It is not certain that everything is uncertain.”

Blaise Pascal

Source: Pascal's Pensees

“What would you say of that man who was made king by the error of the people, if he had so far forgotten his natural condition as to imagine that this kingdom was due to him, that he deserved it, and that it belonged to him of right? You would marvel at his stupidity and folly.”

Blaise Pascal

But is there less in the people of rank who live in so strange a forgetfulness of their natural condition?
Discourses on the Condition of the Great