Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Blaise Pascal

1623 – 1662 CE

One of the greatest French writers of all time

Theologian, inventor, physicist, philosopher; Pascal invented the mechanical calculator, set up the first bus line moving passengers, became one of the greatest French writers, and developed probability theory which has become critical to economics, actuarial science, and the way we understand decision-making and risk. Although he identified with Jansenism which emphasized original sin and human depravity and frequently fixated on religious dogma, his understanding extended to a deep realization of our strong propensity toward projection and self-deception as well as a philosophy of cutting through this kind of deceit and duplicity. His significant scientific contributions led to attaching his name to a programming language, a unit of pressure, and a hydrostatic law. Will Durant called one of his writings, "the most eloquent book in French prose.”

Eras

Unlisted Sources

Pensée

Pensées

Pensées (1669)

Pensées (1670)

Quotes by Blaise Pascal (42 quotes)

“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.”

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“What a chimera then is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, server of uncertainty and error, the glory and the scum of the universe.”

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“Kind words don’t cost much yet accomplish a great deal.”

Themes: Kindness

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

Themes: Evil Religion

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“Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.”

Themes: Justice Power

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“All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

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“If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.”

Themes: Less is More

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“If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.”

Themes: Christianity

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“Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.”

Themes: Longevity

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“There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.”

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“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”

Themes: Belief Deception

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“Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.”

Themes: Truth

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“Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.”

Themes: Lies Illusion

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“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

Themes: Love

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“Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death”

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“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Themes: Curiosity

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“Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.”

Themes: Middle Way

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“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.”

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“I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.”

Themes: Belief God

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“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God”

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“It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs.”

Themes: Music Poetry

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“All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are”

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“There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart that we try in vain to fill with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself”

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“Man's greatness lies in the power of thought.”

Themes: Reason

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

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“What could be less reasonable than to choose as ruler of a state the oldest son of a queen? We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard. Such a law would be ridiculous and unjust, but because men are, and always will be, as they are, it becomes reasonable and just... Reason cannot do any better, because civil war is the greatest of evils.”

from Pensée

Themes: Reason

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“All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still.”

from Pensée

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“Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fans on whatever gets beyond it either way.”

from Pensée

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“Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fans on whatever gets beyond it either way.”

from Pensée

Themes: Conformity

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“Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses force.”

from Pensée

Themes: Opinion

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“Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.”

from Pensée

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“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore, endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.”

from Pensée

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“The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.”

from Pensées (1669)

Themes: Memory

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“One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.”

from Pensées (1669)

Themes: Know Yourself

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“we never live but only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will neer be so.”

from Pensées (1669)

Themes: Hope

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“Custom is the tyrant from which nothing frees us... But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow nor the last to keep”

from Pensées (1669)

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“The Jews hold a middle place between the Christians and the pagans. The Pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Christians know God, and do not love the earth.”

from Pensées (1669)

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“We have neither the true nor the good but in part, and mixed with the false and the evil.”

from Pensées (1669)

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“Men despise religion; they hate it, and fear it is true... we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true.”

from Pensées (1669)

Themes: Religion

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“We find fault with perfection itself.”

from Pensées (1670)

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“All men naturally hate one another. They employ lust as far as possible in the service of the public weal. But this in only a pretense and a false image of love; for at bottom, it is only hate.”

from Pensées (1670)

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“Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?”

from Pensées

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Quotes about Blaise Pascal (4 quotes)

“What is it that we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness.. until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt of which Pascal is the most famous example.”

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

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“Pascal was born in 1623, and was recognized from an early age to be a genius. By 12 he had worked out the first 32 propositions of Euclid; he went on to invent the mathematics of probability, he measured atmospheric pressure, constructed a calculating machine, designed an omnibus, got tuberculosis and wrote the brilliant and pessimistic series of aphorisms in defense of Christian belief know as the Pensées.”

Alain de Botton 1969 CE –
Philosophic link between ancient wisdom and modern challenge
from How Proust Can Change Your Life

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“After a certain age, our memories are so intermingled that the thing we are thinking of or the book we are reading hardly matters at all... quite as valuable discoveries as we could make in Pascal's Thoughts may be inspired by a soap advertisement.”

Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922 CE via Justin O'Brien
Apostle of Ordinary Mind
from Maxims of Marcel Proust

Themes: Simplicity

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“A man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world.”

T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965 CE

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