Blaise Pascal Quotes

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them.

It's always interesting just to see how the human mind is relating to the natural universe, and what we try to make of it just so we can believe we understand what's going on.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.

You can’t have opinions unless you have information.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, by reiteration chiefly.

I am never satisfied until I can make a mathematical model of what I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand. If I cannot, I do not understand.

Comprehension follows perception.

In order to produce the satisfaction of comprehension, there first needs to be the process of comprehension. Furthermore, the overarching idea at hand needs to be something that is actually comprehensible.

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.

to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." from Pavilion of Women page 292

Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory

The region belonging to the pure intellect is straitened: the imagination labours to extend its territories, to give it room. She sweeps across the boarders, searching out new lands into which she may guide her plodding brother. The imagination is the light which redeems from the darkness for the eyes of the understanding. Novalis says, 'The imagination is the stuff of the intellect' -affords, that is, the material upon which the intellect works.

Whenever we proceed from the known to the unkown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'

Reason is sight. Instinct is touch. Intuition is smell.

The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.

In reference to right answers - Knowing is a process, not a product.

We don't really understand something until we have forgotten it.

Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic; there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.