Blaise Pascal Quotes on Knowledge
Pascal's Pensées — the unfinished defense of Christianity left at his death in 1662 — distinguishes the order of the heart from the order of reason, and develops the philosophical anthropology of the human being as a thinking reed suspended between two infinities, the infinitely large of the cosmos and the infinitely small of the corpuscle. The famous wager argues that, given the radical uncertainty of natural reason on the question of God's existence, prudential reasoning under uncertainty favors faith. The earlier scientific Pascal — the geometer of the cycloid, the experimentalist of the void, the inventor of the calculating machine — supplies the intellectual standards against which the limits of natural reason are measured in the Pensées.
Quotes
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Attributed to Blaise Pascal:
“We know the truth not only by reason but also by the heart.”
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“Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum (c.1651)”
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? -
“Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. Provincial Letters : Letter XVI (4 December 1656) | Literally: I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter. | Such statements have also been attributed to Mark Twain , T.S. Eliot , Cicero , and others besides , but this article at Quote Investigator concludes that Pascal's statement i -
“Literally: I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.”
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. -
“Such statements have also been attributed to Mark Twain , T.S. Eliot , Cicero , and others besides , but this article at Quote Investigator concludes that Pascal's statement is likely the original source of the phrase.”
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. -
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”
De l'Art de persuader ["On the Art of Persuasion"], written 1658; published posthumously. -
“De l'Art de persuader ["On the Art of Persuasion"], written 1658; published posthumously.”
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.