“Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.”

The Art of Persuasion

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often wi…" by Blaise Pascal?
Blaise Pascal photo
Blaise Pascal 144
French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Chri… 1623–1662

Related quotes

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in A Small Drop of Ink: A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages (2003) by Linda Pendleton.

Emil M. Cioran photo
Martin Luther photo

“No great saint lived without errors.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Table Talk of Martin Luther

Sydney Smith photo

“Dean Swift's rule is as good for women as for men — never to talk above a half minute without pausing, and giving others an opportunity to strike in.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Parisian Morals and Manners", published in The Edinburgh Review (1843)
Smith might have been thinking of the final words of Swift's "Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation": "It is not a Fault in Company to talk much; but to continue it long, is certainly one; for, if the Majority of those who are got together be naturally silent or cautious, the Conversation will flag, unless it be often renewed by one among them, who can start new Subjects, provided he doth not dwell upon them, but leaveth Room for Answers and Replies".

William of Ockham photo

“Plurality is never to be posited without necessity.”
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi [Questions and the decisions of the Sentences of Peter Lombard] (1495), i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K; also in The Development of Logic (1962), by William Calvert Kneale, p. 243; similar statements were common among Scholastic philosophers, at least as early as John Duns (Duns Scotus).
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.
As cited in "The Myth of Occam's Razor" by William Thorburn, in Mind, Vol. 27 (1918), 345–353.

Niklaus Wirth photo

“In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.”

Niklaus Wirth (1934) Swiss computer scientist

Niklaus Wirth (1997) " A Few Words with Niklaus Wirth http://www.eptacom.net/pubblicazioni/pub_eng/wirth.html". Dr Carlo Pescio eds. June 1997.

Georg Cantor photo

“There is no doubt that we cannot do without variable quantities in the sense of the potential infinite. But from this very fact the necessity of the actual infinite can be demonstrated.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

"Über die verschiedenen Ansichten in Bezug auf die actualunendlichen Zahlen" ["Over the different views with regard to the actual infinite numbers"] - Bihand Till Koniglen Svenska Vetenskaps Akademiens Handigar (1886)

Eric Hobsbawm photo

“Though the web of history cannot be unraveled into separate threads without destroying it, a certain amount of subdivion of the subject is, for practical purposes, essential.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Preface
The Age of Revolution (1962)

David Bohm photo

“We often find that we cannot easily give up the tendency to hold rigidly to patterns of thought built up over a long time. We are then caught up in what may be called absolute necessity.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Changing Consciousness (1991)
Context: We often find that we cannot easily give up the tendency to hold rigidly to patterns of thought built up over a long time. We are then caught up in what may be called absolute necessity. This kind of thought leaves no room at all intellectually for any other possibility, while emotionally and physically, it means we take a stance in our feelings, in our bodies, and indeed, in our whole culture, of holding back or resisting. This stance implies that under no circumstances whatsoever can we allow ourselves to give up certain things or change them. <!-- p. 15

Related topics