What Pascal overlooked was the hair-raising possibility that God might out-Luther Luther. A special area in hell might be reserved for those who go to mass. Or God might punish those whose faith is prompted by prudence. Perhaps God prefers the abstinent to those who whore around with some denomination he despises. Perhaps he reserves special rewards for those who deny themselves the comfort of belief. Perhaps the intellectual ascetic will win all while those who compromised their intellectual integrity lose everything.There are many other possibilities. There might be many gods, including one who favors people like Pascal; but the other gods might overpower or outvote him, à la Homer. Nietzsche might well have applied to Pascal his cutting remark about Kant: when he wagered on God, the great mathematician 'became an idiot. Critique of Religion and Philosophy
SEE AUTHOR
Quote:- What place in the future development of the South ought the Negro college and college-bred man to occupy? That the present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of culture, as the South grows civilized, is clear. But such transformation calls for singular wisdom and patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy,—if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment American civilization will triumph. So far as white men are concerned, this fact is to-day being recognized in the South, and a happy renaissance of university education seems imminent. But the very voices that cry hail to this good work are, strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat.
The Souls of Black Folk
Author:- W.E.B. Du Bois
Category:- knowledge
Quote:- What power a girl can have over a boy, to make him write such things! And what power a boy can have over a girl, to make her believe he has seen her fate. We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them.
How Should a Person Be?
Author:- Sheila Heti
Category:- Relationships
Quote:- What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.
Author:- Epictetus
Category:- philosophy
Quote:- What really got me thinking about illustrating children's books was I discovered Hugh Thompson's illustrations for The Vicar of Wakefield in my mother's library and I looked at it and said, 'That's what I'm going to do.
The Private World of Tasha Tudor
Author:- Tasha Tudor
Category:- inspiration
Quote:- What seems real one moment is fiction the nextand gone out of existence the moment after that.Nostalgia is the greatest enemy of truth,and change our only constancy.
Judevine: The Complete Poems, 1970-1990
Author:- David Budbill
Category:- poetry
Quote:- What should i write about her. My pen knows her better than me.
Author:- Rehan Katrawale
Category:- Life,Love
Quote:- What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set about anything we are disinclined to.
Daniel Deronda
Author:- George Eliot
Category:- time
Quote:- What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
Thoreau Journal 9
Author:- Henry David Thoreau
Category:- philosophy
Quote:- What surrounds us is what is within us.
From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Author:- T.F. Hodge
Category:- best
Quote:- What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.
Author:- Norman Vincent Peale
Category:- motivational
Quote:- What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
Author:- Confucius
Category:- inspiration
Quote:- What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.
Author:- Martha Gellhorn
Category:- Relationships
Quote:- What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
Author:- Friedrich Nietzsche
Category:- philosophy
Quote:- What then, are the nonscientific reasons that have fostered the resurgence of biological determinism? They range, I believe, from pedestrian pursuits of high royalties for best sellers to pernicious attempts to reintroduce racism as respectable science. Their common denominator must lie in our current malaise. How satisfying it is to fob off the responsibility for war and violence upon our presumably carnivorous ancestors. How convenient to blame the poor and the hungry for their own condition – lest we be forced to blame our economic system or our government for an abject failure to secure a decent life for all people. And how convenient an argument for those who control government and, by the way, provide the money that science requires for its very existence.
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
Author:- Stephen Jay Gould
Category:- science
Quote:- What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind.
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Author:- William Wordsworth
Category:- poetry
Quote:- What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Author:- William Wordsworth
Category:- poetry
Quote:- What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Author:- Yukio Mishima
Category:- knowledge
Quote:- What triggers the split? The cause of cell division or what causes cells to divide remains one of the most fundamental, unsolved problems in biology. Allow me to state that truth is simple. This may come as a shock to my colleagues in physics and molecular biology. So best to sit down with a glass of vino but not too long for a sedentary life is unhealthy as we all know. Lest not get distracted however and stick with the cause of cell division. Truth is that 'there is no such thing as cell division'. 'There is only one cell which veils itself so not to be itself.' In fact; I would like to argue that 'there is only one self which veils itself so not to be by itself. Without veiling oneself self could not experience companionship itself and companionship is what self is all about. It is not good for one to be alone. One's very own purpose it is companionship more commonly known as love.' The above ties in nicely with the theory of evolution (which means love in action) and the theory of relativity (time is the result of one not wanting to be alone) to name just a few. Simplified? We are not as divided as it appears. The meaning of life is love.
Author:- Wald Wassermann
Category:- science
