Quotes from Pensées

Quotations follow the A.J. Krailsheimer translation (Penguin Classics, 1995) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.

2. 3

   The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

3. 4

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

4. 5

   If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

5. 6

   All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

6. 7

   All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

7. 8

   Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.

8. 9

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

9. 10

   Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional.

10. 11

    We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

11. 12

    It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason.

12. 13

    Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.

13. 14

    Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of reasoning.

14. 15

    I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God.

15. 16

    The self is hateful.

16. 17

    Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth.

17. 18

    The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

18. 19

    Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind.

19. 20

    To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.