FastSaying

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.]


Blaise Pascal

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

England really is the birthplace, the heart and soul of football. If Barcelona had Liverpool's f...
XAVI Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is th...
JASON REITMAN I've been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed - the birthplace ...
JOE BIDEN Whenever I think of my birthplace, Walton-on-Thames, my reference first and foremost is the river. I...
JULIE ANDREWS Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birt...
JON MEACHAM The whole world is a man's birthplace.
CAECILIUS STATIUS Most people don't know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground... in New O...
JOY HARJO Home is one's birthplace, ratified by memory.
HENRY ANATOLE GRUNWALD Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.
FREDERIC CHOPIN We left my birthplace, Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when I was 13. I enjoyed the ethnic variety and t...
IRWIN ROSE

More Blaise Pascal

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
BLAISE PASCAL We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
BLAISE PASCAL The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange i...
BLAISE PASCAL Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
BLAISE PASCAL He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years ago. I quite believe it. She is no longer the ...
BLAISE PASCAL I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time t...
BLAISE PASCAL The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
BLAISE PASCAL On vanity: The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
BLAISE PASCAL The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is...
BLAISE PASCAL Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as ju...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
BLAISE PASCAL The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us ...
BLAISE PASCAL People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by t...
BLAISE PASCAL Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
BLAISE PASCAL Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
BLAISE PASCAL I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
BLAISE PASCAL Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we...
BLAISE PASCAL Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
BLAISE PASCAL If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He ex...
BLAISE PASCAL Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
BLAISE PASCAL It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants.
BLAISE PASCAL All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
BLAISE PASCAL The property of power is to protect.
BLAISE PASCAL Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
BLAISE PASCAL Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, ...
BLAISE PASCAL Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then aba...
BLAISE PASCAL If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
BLAISE PASCAL Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty i...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole...
BLAISE PASCAL Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
BLAISE PASCAL Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
BLAISE PASCAL We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we n...
BLAISE PASCAL Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
BLAISE PASCAL I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter...
BLAISE PASCAL If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
BLAISE PASCAL The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
BLAISE PASCAL The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
BLAISE PASCAL It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
BLAISE PASCAL How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, &c.! If the Gospel be true, if Jesus...
BLAISE PASCAL Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything i...
BLAISE PASCAL If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and tha...
BLAISE PASCAL The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
BLAISE PASCAL The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the ...
BLAISE PASCAL Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a differ...
BLAISE PASCAL I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
BLAISE PASCAL People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what ...
BLAISE PASCAL The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.
BLAISE PASCAL Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, withou...
BLAISE PASCAL However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
BLAISE PASCAL We must learn our limits. We are all something but none of us are everything.
BLAISE PASCAL To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
BLAISE PASCAL To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
BLAISE PASCAL The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man...
BLAISE PASCAL People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found out by o...
BLAISE PASCAL We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so ...
BLAISE PASCAL There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not fou...
BLAISE PASCAL The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no differen...
BLAISE PASCAL Anyone who considers himself in this way will be seized with terror and, discovering that the mass n...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe n...
BLAISE PASCAL What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what...
BLAISE PASCAL We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
BLAISE PASCAL Law, without force, is impotent.
BLAISE PASCAL Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which ...
BLAISE PASCAL Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occ...
BLAISE PASCAL On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they ar...
BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.
BLAISE PASCAL We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselv...
BLAISE PASCAL The war existing between the senses and reason.
BLAISE PASCAL Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without ...
BLAISE PASCAL The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved...
BLAISE PASCAL Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything i...
BLAISE PASCAL The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approach...
BLAISE PASCAL One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of lif...
BLAISE PASCAL Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts,...
BLAISE PASCAL We like to be deceived.
BLAISE PASCAL The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
BLAISE PASCAL Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their...
BLAISE PASCAL Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
BLAISE PASCAL Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
BLAISE PASCAL Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above,...
BLAISE PASCAL It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the ...
BLAISE PASCAL In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who d...
BLAISE PASCAL Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
BLAISE PASCAL The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.
BLAISE PASCAL Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.
BLAISE PASCAL Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am...
BLAISE PASCAL If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself.
BLAISE PASCAL Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
BLAISE PASCAL I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in ...
BLAISE PASCAL Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
BLAISE PASCAL The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
BLAISE PASCAL I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the...
BLAISE PASCAL If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.
BLAISE PASCAL Ugly deeds are most estimable when hidden.
BLAISE PASCAL If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exi...
BLAISE PASCAL He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.
BLAISE PASCAL It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
BLAISE PASCAL Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whate...
BLAISE PASCAL It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obe...
BLAISE PASCAL To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
BLAISE PASCAL I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
BLAISE PASCAL The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
BLAISE PASCAL Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
BLAISE PASCAL Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
BLAISE PASCAL Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
BLAISE PASCAL Our nature consist in motion; complete rest is death.
BLAISE PASCAL There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think ...
BLAISE PASCAL The only shame is to have none
BLAISE PASCAL It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
BLAISE PASCAL The stream is always purer at its source. [Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source....
BLAISE PASCAL The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in th...
BLAISE PASCAL Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of...
BLAISE PASCAL It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight o...
BLAISE PASCAL All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
BLAISE PASCAL If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.
BLAISE PASCAL What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke, that he does not beli...
BLAISE PASCAL I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.
BLAISE PASCAL If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.
BLAISE PASCAL Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
BLAISE PASCAL You always admire what you really don't understand.
BLAISE PASCAL It is false zeal to keep truth while wounding charity
BLAISE PASCAL Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality
BLAISE PASCAL Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever i...
BLAISE PASCAL Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere
BLAISE PASCAL The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing
BLAISE PASCAL The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.
BLAISE PASCAL Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
BLAISE PASCAL Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
BLAISE PASCAL The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
BLAISE PASCAL I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
BLAISE PASCAL Our notion of symmetry is derived from the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in...
BLAISE PASCAL Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
BLAISE PASCAL Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in ti...
BLAISE PASCAL Little things console us because little things afflict us.
BLAISE PASCAL The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
BLAISE PASCAL You always admire what you really don't understand.
BLAISE PASCAL Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
BLAISE PASCAL The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
BLAISE PASCAL Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gambl...
BLAISE PASCAL Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
BLAISE PASCAL Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offend...
BLAISE PASCAL All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
BLAISE PASCAL In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who d...
BLAISE PASCAL Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
BLAISE PASCAL Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side...
BLAISE PASCAL Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
BLAISE PASCAL In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others ...
BLAISE PASCAL I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friend...
BLAISE PASCAL Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
BLAISE PASCAL We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.
BLAISE PASCAL If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. Ho...
BLAISE PASCAL Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend...
BLAISE PASCAL When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we...
BLAISE PASCAL Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have differen...
BLAISE PASCAL Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on what...
BLAISE PASCAL Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins...
BLAISE PASCAL He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide. [Fr., Les rivieres son...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe n...
BLAISE PASCAL I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter. [Fr., Je...
BLAISE PASCAL Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything ...
BLAISE PASCAL If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves ha...
BLAISE PASCAL We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them ...
BLAISE PASCAL To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
BLAISE PASCAL I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
BLAISE PASCAL A jester, a bad character. [Fr., Diseur de bon mots, mauvais caractere.]
BLAISE PASCAL It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
BLAISE PASCAL We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view t...
BLAISE PASCAL By a peculiar prerogative, not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and ma...
BLAISE PASCAL For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, ...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, stil...
BLAISE PASCAL We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.
BLAISE PASCAL We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us...
BLAISE PASCAL The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
BLAISE PASCAL Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about e...
BLAISE PASCAL People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by other...
BLAISE PASCAL One must know oneself, if this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of lif...
BLAISE PASCAL Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which h...
BLAISE PASCAL Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
BLAISE PASCAL Force rules the world, and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force.
BLAISE PASCAL Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea ...
BLAISE PASCAL Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired : even I who write this, a...
BLAISE PASCAL The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its ori...
BLAISE PASCAL Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.
BLAISE PASCAL Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and...
BLAISE PASCAL What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admi...
BLAISE PASCAL Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous...
BLAISE PASCAL The present is never our goal: the past and present are our means: the future alone is our goal. Thu...
BLAISE PASCAL A mere trifle consoles us for a mere trifle distresses us.
BLAISE PASCAL Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed
BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction
BLAISE PASCAL The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent ple...
BLAISE PASCAL The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosp...
BLAISE PASCAL Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convin...
BLAISE PASCAL It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out...
BLAISE PASCAL The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
BLAISE PASCAL We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by reasons which have o...
BLAISE PASCAL Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; We do not even know ourselves except throug...
BLAISE PASCAL