Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Blaise PascalRead
Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
Interpretation
The quote suggests that not everything we know is subject to doubt, challenging a purely skeptical perspective.
Blaise Pascal's quote plays with the concept of uncertainty and skepticism. It implies that while uncertainty is a common theme in human thought, one should be cautious in asserting that everything is uncertain. This invites reflection on the nature of knowledge and belief, suggesting that some things can be known with certainty despite common doubts.
In practice
During a debate on philosophy at a university, one could quote Pascal to emphasize the limits of skepticism.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself?
This is something that I'm sure I'd have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell.
For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. _x000D_ Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
We have to get out of this mindset that the rich will do the business and the poor will have the charity.
Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.
A man of bad character punishes his own soul.
My father once told me that a happy ending is just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. So this is where I choose to stop. More things are still going to happen, of course, some good, some bad. Some things never get any better. When people die they stay dead. None of us knows why we love, or why we stop loving, or why everyone we love we lose.
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