What is a man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.
- Topic: Perception
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Blaise Pascal
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.
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?
If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.
More on Perception
Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.
You write in order to change the world…the world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimetre the way people look at reality, then you change it.
Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined or the insect, as well for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.
Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”
