Blaise Pascal | Physicist & Philosopher

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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

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

Little things comfort us because little things distress us.

I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

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

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

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

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

The only shame is to have none.