Blaise Pascal's quotes

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.

It is dangerous to make man see his equality with the brutes without showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to make him see his greatness too clearly, apart from his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him ignorant of both. But it is very advantageous to show him both.

It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason. Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only give reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves.

Jesus Christ is the center of everything, and the object of everything, and he that does not know Him knows nothing of nature and nothing of himself.

There are three kinds of people in the world; those who have sought God and found Him and now serve Him, those who are seeking Him but have not yet found Him, and those who neither seek Him nor find Him. The first are reasonable and happy, the second reasonable and unhappy, and the third unreasonable and unhappy.

The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.

Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly. Of all their errors, this doubtless is the one which most convicts them of foolishness and blindness, and in which it is easiest to confound them by the first glimmerings of common sense and by natural feelings. This resting in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who pass their life in it must be made to feel its extravagance and stupidity, by having it shown to them, so that they may be confounded by the sight of their folly.

Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.

The quickest way to prevent heresy is to teach all truths, and the most certain way of refuting it is to expose them all.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.

According to the doctrine of chance, you ought to put yourself to the trouble of searching for the truth; for if you die without worshipping the True Cause, you are lost. 'But,' say you, 'if He had wished me to worship Him, He would have left me signs of His will.' He has done so; but you neglect them. Seek them, therefore; it is well worth it.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness. This desire is left to us, partly to punish us, partly to make us perceive wherefrom we are fallen.

For myself, I confess that, so soon as the Christian religion reveals the principle that human nature is corrupt and fallen from God, that opens my eyes to see everywhere the mark of this truth: for nature is such that she testifies everywhere, both within man and without him, to a lost God and a corrupt nature.

Every religion is false which, as to its faith, does not worship one God as the origin of everything and which, as to its morality, does not love one only God as the object of everything.

Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts it does not know what a saint or a man is.

We understand nothing of the works of God, if we do not take as a principle that He has willed to blind some and enlighten others.

The world exists for the exercise of mercy and judgement, not as if men were placed in it out of the hands of God, but as hostile to God; and to them He grants by grace sufficient light, that they may return to Him, if they desire to seek and follow Him; and also that they may be punished, if they refuse to seek or follow Him.

Jesus Christ said great things so simply that it seems as though He had not thought them great; and yet so clearly that we easily see what He thought of them. This clearness, joined to this simplicity, is wonderful.

The evidence of God’s existence and His Gift are more compelling, but those who insist that they have no need of Him or it will always find ways to discount the offer.

It is in vain, oh men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you discover the true and the good. The philosopher promised them to you, but they were not able to keep that promise. They do not know what your true good is or what your nature is. How should they have provided you with a cure for ills which they have not even understood? Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you away from God, and sensuality which binds you to the earth. And they have done nothing but foster at least one of the maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has been pander to your pride. They have made you think you were like him and resemble him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down in the other abyss by making you believe that your nature is like that of the beast of the field and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.