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CelticWarlord
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Blaise Pascal (1623 – 662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. Pascal’s earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences, where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal’s calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.
"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason."
"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others."
"We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it."
"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere."
"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists."
"All human evil comes from a single cause, mankind’s inability to sit still in a room."
"Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm."
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- - - - - - -"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others."
"We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it."
"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere."
"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists."
"All human evil comes from a single cause, mankind’s inability to sit still in a room."
"Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm."