Pensées
The same Pascal that has his name on the unit of pressure and Pascal’s triangle collected his fragments of thought in Pensées. The collection mainly consists of two themes: one is a proto-existentialist philosophy that examines the pragmatic life, and the other is on theology, defending Christianity. I read the book from a secular point of view found his pragmatic fragments of philosophy witty and piercing, but I was turned off by the deluge of theology. Pascal suffers from the same fault as other intelligent but overly zealous religious philosophers of old, in that his strong faith in doctrine undermines his persuasiveness as a writer. Despite this, Pascal was a psychologist-philosopher ahead of his time, and on the scale of centuries, and his philosophical contributions were golden and previews of what were to come.
Pascal’s wager is one of Pascal’s enduring contributions to philosophy, where he makes a logical argument to say that we should believe in God: because if we believe, the upside is heaven’s infinite joy, the downside is nonexistent, whereas if we don’t believe, the upside is none and the downside is infinite suffering. But I find this to be bogus, because there are an infinite number of possible correct beliefs/religions, that to think this is a 50-50 choice is absurd when the true probability is one out of infinity. Furthermore, you have the idea of heresy: even the smallest issues worth only a footnote can explode into giant heretical controversies, such as the Arian controversy that rocked the whole Christian world during the late Roman empire. The really bad heretics go to hell, so in theory you can believe in a religion and be devout, but get a detail wrong and mess everything up… it doesn’t help that even within one main belief there can be potentially infinite heresies. Basically, there’s no way to win the wager when it is presented holistically, and because the denominator of possible beliefs is infinite, to wager any belief in the numerator has the same end result as to not wager at all. Since the chances are nil, it makes better sense to believe in the most pragmatically useful belief, instead of fearing the infinite hell punishment or thirsting for the infinite heaven reward.
% grep -i "pensées" quotes.txt13 matches
on power
“As men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on honesty
“Each rung of fortune’s ladder which brings us up in the world takes us further from the truth, because people are more wary of offending those whose friendship is most useful and enmity most dangerous. Telling the truth is useful to the hearer but harmful to those who tell it”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on habit
“We must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and strain ourselves in that belief which constantly eludes us, for it is too much trouble to have the proofs always present before us”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on diversion
“What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on diversion
“What men are reproached for pursuing so eagerly something that could never satisfy them, their proper answer, if they really thought about it, ought to be that they simply want a violent and vigorous occupation to take their minds off themselves, and that is why they choose some attractive object to entice them in ardent pursuit. Their opponents could find no answer to that”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on trifles
“Cleopatra’s nose: if it had been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been different”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on vanity
“We do not care about our reputation in towns where we are only passing through. But when we have to stay some time we do care. How much time does it take? A time proportionate to our vain and paltry existence”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on desire
“Men are not wrong to want excitement – if they only wanted it for the sake of diversion. The trouble is that they want it as though, once they had the things they seek, they could not fail to be truly happy. This is what justifies calling their search a vain one”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on commonality
“However exalted great men may be, they still have some point of contact with the humblest of men. If they are greater than we, it is because their heads are higher up, but their feet are as low down as ours”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on knowledge
“There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on erudition
“Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who ran through the whole range of human knowledge only to find that they know nothing and come back to the same ignorance from which they set out, but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on unhappiness
“The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés
on fickleness
“What causes inconstancy is the realization that present pleasures are false, together with the failure to realize that absent pleasures are vain”
— Blaise Pascal, Penseés