Blaise Pascal Quotes

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

As areas of knowledge grow, so too do the perimeters of ignorance.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

I don't feel it incumbent on me to make sense of everything.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand.

Some things are beyond human understanding.

The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language - Logos; I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

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'

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.