Blaise Pascal Quotes on Man (36 Quotes)

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised and delighted, for we thought to see an author and found a man.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

When we see a natural style, we are quite surprised and delighted, for we expected to see an author and we find a man.

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

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Man is neither angel nor beast and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired even I who write this, and you who read this

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse.

It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.

Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

How hollow and full of ribaldry is the heart of man

The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.

Men despise religion they hate it and fear it is true.

The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Man is full of desires he loves only those who can satisfy them all. 'This man is a good mathematician,' someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics he would take me for a proposition. 'That one is a good soldier.' He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

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

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object - that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such - even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.

Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man lovable because it promises the true good.

Men despise religion they hate it, and they fear it is true.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.