18 February 2022

36 One Liners from Blaise Pascal That Will Open Your Mind

Blaise Pascal lived in the 1600s and is famous for his argument for the existence of God, known as ‘Pascal’s wager’. Put simply, it states that you should live as though God exists, because if you are right then you get infinite gains (heaven), and if you’re wrong you get finite losses (some pleasures). It’s a probabilistic way of thinking, which reflected the fact that Pascal was also an accomplished mathematician. This combination of interest in the meaning of life and science gave Pascal unique insights. Importantly, he was a great writer who could compress complex ideas into simple one-liners, which is why I like him so much. But don’t take my word for it – here are a selection of his one-liners:

On Evil

‘All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.’
‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’
‘Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.’
‘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?’
‘Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.’

Good Character

‘Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.’
‘The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.’
‘Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.’
‘Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, sceptically of scepticism.’
‘There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.’
‘Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.’

Human nature

‘Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.’
‘If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.’
‘Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.’
‘You always admire what you really don’t understand.’
‘Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.’
‘Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.’
‘If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.’
‘When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.’
‘Man’s sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.’

Happiness

‘If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.’

‘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.’

What is True?

‘The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.’
‘People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.’
‘Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.’
‘We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.’
‘Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.’
‘Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.’
‘People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.’
‘It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.’

Nature

‘The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.’
‘Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.’
‘Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.’

Writing

‘I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.’
‘Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.’
‘The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.’

Hope you found the quotes useful!

Bilal