Blaise Pascal Quotes

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

Motives are often more important than actions

The important thing about human beings is not what they do, but why they do it.

I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

All human activity is prompted by desire.

People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.

Vice: Whatever was passion in the contemplation of man, being brought forth by his will into action.

To discover your mission and put it into action - instead of worrying on the sidelines - is to find peace of mind and a heart full of love.

We are human beings. We operate from wanting to be rewarded.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

When it comes to power as it functions between humans, it all comes down to desire. If you know what someone wants, you can control them. It is as simple as that. And the reverse is also true: If you have control over your own desires, no one will ever own you. As humans, we are plagued with desire - it consumes us, it fuels us, it destroys us.

People act on what they want more often than what they need.

The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.

A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill.

Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize - especially when it comes to what he wants to eat.