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God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?

Blaise Pascal

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Blaise Pascal
Age: 39 †
Born: 1623
Born: June 19
Died: 1662
Died: August 19
French Moralist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Statistician
Theologian
Writer
Clarmont-Ferrand
Pascal
Louis de Montalte
Amos Dettonville
Dettonville
Paskal Blez
Turns
Played
Incline
Reason
Infinite
Separated
Nothing
Side
Tails
Game
Heads
Turn
Decide
Shall
Chaos
Wager
Sides
God
Wagers
Games
Distance
Extremity

More quotes by Blaise Pascal

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All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.
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Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
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Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
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The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
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How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.
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Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.
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Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
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Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?
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If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?
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All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself.
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Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Blaise Pascal
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Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.
Blaise Pascal
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When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.
Blaise Pascal
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Thought makes the whole dignity of man therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.
Blaise Pascal
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Force and not opinion is the queen of the world but it is opinion that uses the force. [Fr., La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion mais l'opinion est celle qui use de la force.]
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Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.
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Symmetry is what we see at a glance based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
Blaise Pascal
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I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion beyond this, he has no further need of God.
Blaise Pascal
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There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
Blaise Pascal
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We make an idol of truth itself for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.
Blaise Pascal