Pascal Quotes - Page 2

• Pascal in his bitter rendition of the practices of the Jesuit intellectuals he despised, including their demonstration of "the utility of interpretation," a device of manufacturing consent based on reinterpretation of sacred texts to serve wealth, power, and privilege.

  Noam Chomsky

  Practice, Sacred, Privilege

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.

  William James

  Heart, Science, Doe

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.18, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always considered "Pascal's Wager" a questionable bet to place. Any God worth "believing in" would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Atheist, Believe, Hypocrite

  7 Copy quote

• Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler-such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal-were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Character, Science, Race

  7 Copy quote

• Foreshadowings of the principles and even of the language of [the infinitesimal] calculus can be found in the writings of Napier, Kepler, Cavalieri, Pascal, Fermat, Wallis, and Barrow. It was Newton's good luck to come at a time when everything was ripe for the discovery, and his ability enabled him to construct almost at once a complete calculus.

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Writing, Good Luck, Science

  W. W. Rouse Ball (2012). “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics”, p.347, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.

  Anatole France

  Science, Thinking, Sublime

  Anatole France (1920). “The garden of Epicurus”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Go is most fun I've had with a compiled PL since I've discovered Turbo Pascal as a kid.

  Bojan Markovic

  Fun, Kids, Programming

  4 Copy quote

• It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Success, Beautiful, War

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.260, Regent College Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.

  Machado de Assis

  Men, Thinking, Next

  Machado de Assis (1952). “Epitaph of a Small Winner”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer.

  Peter Norvig

  Memories, Style, Special

  Peter Norvig (2014). “Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp”, p.9, Morgan Kaufmann

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists:  Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Religious, Art, Passionate

  4 Copy quote

• It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts towards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits.

  John Locke

  Memories, Men, Perfection

  John Locke (1854). “The Philosophical Works of John Locke”, p.268

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• TeX has found at least one bug in every Pascal compiler it's been run on, I think, and at least two in every C compiler

  Donald Knuth

  Running, Thinking, Two

  15 Copy quote

• I've always been very keen on Pascal, and what I'm most keen on in Pascal is his emphasis upon human wretchedness. He has a phrase which goes something like 'Anxiety, boredom and inconstancy, that is the human condition' and I've always been very partial to that.

  Simon Critchley

  Boredom, Anxiety, Phrases

  7 Copy quote

• Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.... storytelling is intrinsic to biological time, which we cannot escape. Life, Pascal said, is like living in a prison from which every day fellow prisoners are taken away to be executed. We are all, like Scheherazade, under sentence of death, and we all think of our lives as narratives, with beginnings, middles and ends.

  A. S. Byatt

  Taken, Thinking, Blood

  6 Copy quote

• I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Reading, Circles, People

  Leo Tolstoy (2010). “A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Former Sony CEO Amy Pascal - they threw her out of the headquarters, but they gave her a new office on the lot. But she can't move into it because it reeks of pot smoke. Apparently, this is true, the former tenant was Seth Rogan. And he, as we know, smokes so much weed, when he finally exhales, it looks like there's a new pope.

  Peter Sagal

  Weed, Moving, Office

  "Limericks". "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" with Peter Sagal, www.npr.org. March 7, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The French still offer Sartre and Derrida rather than Pascal.

  Robert Bly

  Derrida, Offers, Stills

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pascal and Voltaire both probably had IQs in the neighborhood of 200.

  Paul Popenoe

  Neighborhood

  4 Copy quote

• A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.

  Raymond Simard

  Art, Humorous, Today

  4 Copy quote

• Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged, almost equally, to the future and to the past.

  Lytton Strachey

  Writing, Past, Style

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.45, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome.

  Camille Paglia

  Overcoming, Males, Female

  "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson". Book by Camille Paglia, 1990.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be "contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.

  Eric Hoffer

  Common Sense, Doctrine, Pleasure

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In exchange for his first taste of powdered milk, Pascal showed me a tree we could climb to find a bird's nest. After we handled and examined the pink-skinned baby birds, he popped one of them into his mouth like a jujube. It seemed to please him a lot. He offered a baby bird to me, pantomiming that I should eat it. I understood perfectly well what he meant, but I refused. He did not seem disappointed to have to eat the whole brood himself.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Baby, Bird, Tree

  5 Copy quote

• In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.

  Lytton Strachey

  Character, Quality, Genius

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.44, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source