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Single Idea 6681

[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric ]

Full Idea

We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

Gist of Idea

We only want to know things so that we can talk about them

Source

Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 77 (152))

Book Ref

Pascal,Blaise: 'Pensées', ed/tr. Krailsheimer,A.J. [Penguin 1966], p.50

A Reaction

This may be right, but I wouldn't underestimate it as a worthy end (though Pascal, as usual, calls it 'vanity'). Good talk might even be the highest human good (how many people like, more than anything, chatting in pubs?), and good talk is knowledgeable.

The 15 ideas from Blaise Pascal

6677 Imagination creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the supreme good [Pascal]
6678 We live for the past or future, and so are never happy in the present [Pascal]
6679 It is not good to be too free [Pascal]
6680 It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal]
6681 We only want to know things so that we can talk about them [Pascal]
6682 Majority opinion is visible and authoritative, although not very clever [Pascal]
22011 The first principles of truth are not rational, but are known by the heart [Pascal]
6676 Painting makes us admire things of which we do not admire the originals [Pascal]
7457 Pascal is right, but relies on the unsupported claim of a half as the chance of God's existence [Hacking on Pascal]
7455 Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable [Pascal, by Hacking]
7456 The libertine would lose a life of enjoyable sin if he chose the cloisters [Hacking on Pascal]
6684 If you win the wager on God's existence you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing [Pascal]
6675 The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing [Pascal]
20732 If man considers himself as lost and imprisoned in the universe, he will be terrified [Pascal]
10121 Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor lack of contradiction a sign of truth [Pascal]